Snowtape 2: First Impressions

Just recently it came out a major update of the popular application for recording internet radio, Snowtape.

The principal innovation was the ability to save audio stream without re-encoding (only for MP3 /AAC +), Inevitably causes a loss in quality, the benefit of the stations that broadcast music in high bit rates is relatively small, and save as the MP3 stream 64 kbps to 160 kbps - not the best possible ideas. Supported formats are also several expanded and now includes MP3 / AAC + / Ogg Vorbis and WMA.

The application interface is certainly seem familiar to any user Mac, benefit similar to iTunes suggest themselves. The presence of even a mini-controller that provides access to the main functions of the application, otedaya minimum screen space.

The recording process is simple utterly: or click the "red button", or expose the recording schedule. I would like to listen to while recording another station? No problem. You can even record multiple broadcasts, as long as the width of the online channel but enough disk space. Recorded Shows Snowtape saves in collection, honestly trying to put things in order in the catalog records, however, with varying results. In some cases, you still have to manually edit the start / stop recording, or add album cover, a lot depends on the station. Authors honestly tried to help users, noting in the directory flag station, the most suitable for recording, adding that, however, more information noise.

The biggest drawback Snowtape 2 in my opinion - the directory, the catalog of available stations. She navorochena to such an extent that the level of the problem "find stations that play industrial with bitrate of at least 128 Kbit / s" are very non-trivial. Tune in, favorites, import... too confusing to be useful. A list of local stations - a good idea, but that's why Snowtape something truly believes that I am somewhere in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, working with imported from the catalog stations organized quite well and raises no objections.

Among the "pleasant things" the new version of Snowtape is worth noting the work with playlists, AirTunes support (in practice meaning the ability to redirect audio stream to AppleTV or Airport Express) and fashionable nowadays scrobbling last.fm.

What we have in the end? A good solution for listening to and recording Internet radio, has several unique features.

P.S.: Listen to the radio using Snowtape 2 are free. For the opportunity to write you will have to pay $ 33 for an upgrade from a previous version - half.