Tips, tricks, tools, and techniques for Microsoft Office

A local radio station has a program I enjoy on Sunday nights -- at the same time I'm busy with Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. Because the radio station doesn't archive the program, I need to record the live program from the station's audio stream audio on the Web.

I tried several audio recorders, but most of them have had problems. Internet Radio Recorder, for example, dropped bits, so at certain points the audio sounded more staccato than smooth.

Fortunately, I found Easy Hi-Q Recorder version 2.0 ($29.95, free upgrades for life). You can record direct to MP3, WMA, WAV, or even OGG Vorbis (a popular format for podcasts) with above-CD quality (48 KHz stereo) down to 8KHz mono. MP3 and WMA bitrates range from 5 to 320 Kbps. No matter what the source -- from steaming audio to DVD playback (it records only the audio portion) -- if your sound card processes it, Hi-Q will capture it to your hard disk. You can also record from a microphone connected to your sound card, which is how I used the program recently to create an audio track for a podcast.

Easy Hi-Q's Options Panel Click to enlarge

In my tests, Easy Hi-Q Recorder never dropped a note of music when I captured a full, continuous hour of playback from a Real Networks Rhapsody and an AOL "radio" station. Set up is extremely easy, and as it records, the program tells you how much disk space the recording has used and how much is still available.

Press the Record button and the program will record until you press "Stop" or your hard disk space is completely consumed. There's also a "Manual Recording Length" option that lets you specify how long the recording should last (in hours, minutes, and seconds). You specify a filename for the recording, and Easy Hi-Q Recorder can append a sequential number or the date and time.

For me, the best feature is the ability to schedule recordings. I can tell the program to record my weekly streaming radio show every Sunday beginning at 9 PM for two hours, start the media stream on my PC (my speakers are turned off, of course), and Easy Hi-Q Recorder dutifully captures the program for me.

If you can playback an audio stream (such as a favorite LP through your system's line-in port), the Song Detection feature can recognize silence between songs and automatically break up the audio into individual songs. I wasn't successful in the few tweaks I made to the settings; this takes more experimentation time than I was willing to invest. Splitting by song isn't the only option; you can split longer streams by time (74- or 80-minute blocks are predefined, but you can specify any length of time in minutes) or file size (650- or 700-MB blocks are predefined, but you can enter any file size you like).

I'm always leery of any audio or video program that promises to be easy (especially when it has "easy" in the product's name), then turns out to stump me with an abundance of options. By accepting the defaults, with Easy Hi-Q Recorder I was able to record MP3 and WMA files without a second thought.

You'll find more technical details at http://www.roemersoftware.com/moreinfo5.html. The company offers a trial version (the maximum recording length is 3 minutes).

Simple and easy -- that's what I like in a sound product's user interface. Couple that with a wide variety of output settings and you have one foolproof audio capture utility.

-- James E. Powell

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