Screamer Radio by David Zidar

Screamer Radio by David Zidar

There's nothing like working on my web site, downloading files and doing a bit of chat while I've got some smooth jazz playing in the background. Oh sure, you can fire up the mp3's, but why not let someone else do the spinning for you. With Screamer Radio, you will be able to pick up just about any web based radio broadcast within the confines of your computer. Small, simple and resource friendly, tune in to the following review and see if Screamer Radio is right for you. Here's the skinny:

Platform......
I'll be damned if I can find where it states what OS it runs on, but I have it running on both my laptop with Win 98SE and on my desktop with Windows XP Pro. I'll let you take it from there.

Web Site.........
Screamer Radio's web site is condensed for this program only so there's no searching around other files and pages for the one you want. The colors are pleasant to the eyes and the fonts are large for us older individuals. Links to all pages contained on this site are available on the home page! Again, no fussing around looking for something.

Downloading........
One click from the download page and that's it. You can choose between the zipped version or the self install .exe file. 

Size Downloaded: 553.6 for the .exe
Size Installed: a little over a meg

Installation........
Screamer Radio using a standard installation engine to get on your hard drive. The opening screen, EULA, pick a spot, choose a menu folder, watch it go in and that's it. Go ahead and run it! There's no need to re-boot.

Help Files........
Well, what can I say! There's not much as far as program access to a help file is concerned however, there's a nice forum available from the web site which has current postings and good support as well as a online help page which gives you the basics.

Interface & Features......
The interface consists of a small window complete with all of the information and controls necessary to work with the program. The 'information' section gives you the listing of the current station including it's website plus the name of the song currently playing along with it's statistics. To the left are some really neat peakmeters that bounce up and down with the beat, to the right is the slide control for the volume, menu items are at the top and below everything are buttons for the functions along with an activity info line at the very bottom  stating the actual stream location and how long Screamer has been running. Here's a pic:

Going along to the 'settings' menu will give you a  'preferences' selection where you make your specific changes to the program.  Contained within this area is a multi-tabbed window which allows you to make changes to everything from the color of the sliders to where you want to store your recorded music (more on that later). Here's a few pics to give you a good idea on what can be adjusted and altered in Screamer Radio:

Screamer Radio utilizes Shoutcast and  Icecast MP3, OGG and Windows Media audio streaming for playback, so you'll get the true  MP3 streams into your computer and out of your speakers, assuring you of quality digital sound.  It should be noted that at this time, Screamer Radio does NOT support Real Audio broadcasts for copyright and programming reasons I'm sure. A small bump in a very large road!

Now of course, in order to be able to listen to Screamer Radio, you need web radio stations. Screamer comes with a pre-selected list of some very good stations including the new Sky.fm, Somafm and a few from far away countries such as Africa and Asia. I have been sampling some of these far off stations and it's very interesting listening to the different styles found elsewhere in this world. Here's a pic of my desktop with the Screamer menu item 'presets' open to give you an idea on some of the listings:

Screamer Radio also has the ability to let you insert your favorite online stations however, this process is quite complicated for the average computer user at this time. It involves placing specific code into a file called 'favorites.xml' (which can be opened from the menu area) and adjusting the code to the specifics of the station you want to input including the site name, it's web address, and most importantly, it's stream address. Saving and reloading this favorites file (again from the menu area)  will bring up the listing under the  'favorites' menu item. It should be noted that one slight mistake in this file, and the whole thing will not show at all. I've been able to get the hang of placing a few of my favorites in there, and the forum found on their web site has a specific area just for listing various presets that can be cut and pasted  in.  Hopefully, this system of listing your own preferences for station listings could be improved in a  future version of this freebie, even if it's just a small input window for the various bits of information.  In the mean time, if you're not interested in learning how to do this,  the preset listings contain quite a number of styles of music and talk radio to choose from.

If you're interested in what has been playing recently while you've been working, the log file contains all of the activity performed with Screamer radio including station changes, starting and stopping, and of course, the listings of songs played. It's very handy if you remember a song you heard but can't remember the name. Just open up the log file and take a peek. It's quite colorful too. Here's a pic:

Quite an outstanding feature of Screamer Radio is it's ability to record what is being  played. In the 'preferences' area on the first recording tab (shown above) there is a place to point the program to where you would like the recorded music to go. When clicking on the 'Rec' button, each song  that plays goes into this area one song at a time! It's rather unique and a good way to collect music! The one drawback of recording your music this way is the noticeable overlap at the beginning of a song if it was presented that way  in the broadcast. Strangely, I noticed that the overlap isn't noticed at the end of a song, only the beginning. When depressing  the Rec button found on the program interface, it  turns into capitol letters which can be a bit confusing at first however, do enough recording and you'll get used to it rather quickly.