iRecordMusic - 1.6 build 468

This program worked fine until I upgraded to Leopard. It does not now seem to respond to Apple Script events and even its own dialogue boxes (eg 'your software is up to date') cause it to freeze. Urgently in need of repairing before I would again recommend anyone to buy it.

I have owned this program and have tried to use it many times but it has a major flaw that the developers refuse to address.

If you are recording a show and the stream times out or dies it will NOT reconnect !

So you will end up with a recoding off just a partial show! Radio Replay for the PC has no problem reconnecting and will dutifully keep attempting... I never miss a program with Radio Replay BUT I have to keep a pc laptop running Windows for this ! I wanted a mac app and I thought I had found it but until this is fixed your dreaming if you think your recordings will be reliable. When the app works it is fine and the quality of the recordings are great - if they would just fix the dead stream problem I could go back to my imac and finally put away the old thinkpad that sits around.

I cant understand why they will not fix this! They know it exists and they keep promising to fix it and they never do! I stopped using this program 2 years ago when they told me they knew about it and maybe they'll fix it...

So if your hardcore about recording a stream radio show from the net there really is no mac solution.

Haven't used iRecordMusic, so I can't comment on it, but I have used Rogue Ameoba's Audio Hijack as well as Ambrosia's WireTap Pro, both of which offer similar functionality and work well (and are a bit cheaper).

A very solid and capable program when it's working, but when it fails, it really fails. Basically, you can't plan on iRecordMusic recording your radio programs if you leave the program unattended for any length of time. If either your internet connection or the site you're streaming aren't 100% reliable, you'll get an error dialog popping up. While the error dialog is up, the program refuses to launch additional recordings and you'll return to find a dozen AppleScript timeout errors waiting to be dismissed.

The iCal integration likely adds some neat features, but having to use it to schedule your recordings is frustrating. It's tough to tell at a glance what station/site you're going to record. (ak47.akamai.com/radiodist.asp?zzy anyone?) And even apart from the launch problems above, events are sometimes missed without warning or explanation even though they clearly exist in iCal.

The program's insistence on generating popups for everything it does is also a little frustrating. The iCal integration means iCal keeps loading and jumping to the foreground, and the app itself leaps to the foreground displaying windows full of animated banner ads and file compressoin status updates. If anyone knows of a way to make it operate solely in the background I'd love to know about it. The software for the RadioSHARK hardware offers a great example of how this should work -- completely silent background recording without so much as a bouncing dock icon.

Lastly, there's no user forum for people who want to share tricks on "eating around the bugs," tips for new and interesting uses, and lists of interesting sites for recording.

While the reliability problems trump most else for me, I don't want to only rag on the program. There's plenty of good to go with the problems. For example, no matter what audio format you prefer, there's an option for you. From FLAC to mp3 to AAC and many more, you can have your streams saved off however you please. Nobody's left out in the cold here.

Parts of the interface are pure genius, as well. To record a site, rather than having to find the URL for the RealPlayer or Windows Media Player stream, you simply use a browser to start the stream as you normally might. iRecordMusic notes the address of the page containing the media player and uses that for future launches. Not only is this easier than hand-picking a streaming media URL, but more reliable. Many stations seem to use multiple streaming providers or even use scripts to generate URLs based on the date or your Mac's streaming capabilities, and iRM doesn't suffer by it.

iRM also doesn't require the user to listen to stations being recorded. They record silently so there's no problem with listening to music while the recording happens. Further, it's possible to record multiple stations at once, even if both stations want to use RealPlayer at the same time.

So far as I know, this is the only program like it on the Mac. In my view, if BitCartel can get rid of the troublesome blocking error dialogs and firm up the scheduling, they'll have a five star product.

it was sooooooo easy to test and verify this would work for the specific task i had in mind. well worth the fee especially for the instructions which are written for people, not mac wonks. highly recommended.