Internet radio has several advantages over its terrestrial counterpart. Some of the biggest include the ability to search stations by various parameters like genre or songs on air, or the option to record multiple radio stations at once.
RarmaRadio is a free Internet radio player and recorder that combines all what is good in its interface.
The Windows software displays a selection list in a sidebar on the left that you can use to list radio stations and related information, like the last played stations, in the program interface.
Once you make a selection, for instance to display stations that cover a specific genre of music, you will notice that the program pulls the information from the Internet before they are displayed in the program window.
Rarma Radio
You can double-click on a radio station to tune in right away, or select one of the recording options instead to save music to the local system. Various options are available, from recording individual songs to using a timer or recording until you stop the process.
You can save music from multiple stations, but the handling is not as user friendly as that of my favorite Internet radio recorder StreamWriter. The program settings can be used to change the recording folder and output format, as well as optional cover art and lyric downloads, proxy support or the hotkeys.
The radio player features a search that you can use to find specific radio stations by name or genre, and options to add missing radio stations to the station listing. The new station’s streaming url needs to be known before the station can be added to the program.
The developer has added a handful of interesting options to the application. You can for instance use the random station option to play a random radio station in the program. There is also the option to sort radio stations by network. Popular networks like .977 music or 1.fm can be selected to display all of the network’s stations in the program window.
Users of the program can furthermore schedule the recording of Internet radio stations, which may be useful for listeners who like a certain show or program that is on air regularly. You can either configure the program to record the show whenever it airs, or only if you know that you can’t listen to it.
A wish and ignore list is available which could prove useful to some users. The wish list can be used to monitor radio stations for specific songs that you can either have the program record songs on it automatically, play them whenever they are streamed or do both. The ignore list can be configured to block songs in the player. This can be advertisement that a station is playing in regular intervals, or songs that you hate and never want to listen to again in your entire life.
RarmaRadio on top of that lists free TV stations as well in its interface. The majority are free independent stations that use streaming to distribute their program to their viewers. While you won’t find HBO in there, you will find lots of regional stations listed here that may be worth a try. TV stations are sorted by country, and play in a new window that opens up when you select a tv station there.
Closing Words
RarmaRadio is a interesting StreamWriter alternative. While not as easy to use in terms of recording, it offers features on top of the other program that may make it interesting to some users. Definitely a program to keep an eye on.