Radio Alarm Apps?

[Harvey Wallbanger]

Been looking for a good radio alarm. One that will wake you up to an internet stream. The market only shows two. AppTime/AppTime Pro and Andro Radio. AppTime has lots of negative comments about it being unreliable with Froyo. I guess the last thing you want is an alarm clock that's unreliable!

Then there's Andro Radio which apparenly relies on the paid app Locale to handle its alarm chores. Which got me to wondering, if you've got Locale then why wouldn't it work with any or all of the available Android radio apps like iHeartRadio or A Online Radio or Xlialive?

 

[Harvey Wallbanger]

Ok, folks, the answer is TUNE-IN RADIO. Find it in the market. Definitely the best radio for waking up to streaming internet stations. Alarm functions are built-in and you can set alarms to repeat only on certain days of the week. Just what I was looking for.

 

[Harvey Wallbanger]

Another interesting app is RADIO RIP. It doesn't have an alarm function, but it is the ONLY Android app I've ever seen that can RECORD STREAMING INTERNET AUDIO!

Sorry for the all caps but that is a big deal that bears repeating. It records streaming internet audio! Caveats: it only works with MP3 streams, not with AAC streams. It will let you input a URL for your favorite internet radio station. Nowadays a lot of over-the-air broadcast stations try to disguise their streams or put them in a Flash wrapper, or require a proprietary player, or other such chicanery, so it may take some effort for you to find a compatible stream. But with persistance, I was able to do it for the two nationally syndicated programs that are most important to me by hunting around the country for stations that still had basic http mp3 streams of the shows I wanted. (Amateur Shoutcast streams are usually compatible with RADIO RIP, but I'm more interested in the professional over-the-air broadcast shows that have internet simulcasts.)

This RADIO RIP app will actually let you record 3 or 4 streams from different stations simultaneously while listening to one of them live. I've already written the developer asking him to add a timer/scheduler but he hasn't written back yet. So for now, its just manual recording.

 

[Harvey Wallbanger]

I've been using Radio Rip Lite - the free version, and wondering what it was missing compared to the paid version. Well this morning I found out. If you actually want your ripped radio shows to be permanently stored on your SD card, you need to buy the paid version.