FM Radio and FM recording!

[XavierGr]

Yes it's finally implemented (though not finsished).

FM radio is finally working but the real good news are that we can Record from Radio too! And quite good I can say.

Press the A-B button and you will see a new option named FM radio.
Now you will see a very minimalistic screen that gives you the option change stations. No presets for now but they are on their way I suppose.

If you want to record from the radio go to Info->Debug PCM recording. Press A-B button until the source is set to line-in. You will now probably listen to the last radio station you had. Press the record button and voila a nice wave recording of the station you were listening.

I made a test for about 1 minute and I was very pleased by the result. Though the recording function is still experimental and may crash your player I didn't had any problems playing the wave file from my PC.

Oh and guess what... I found no distortion in the recording, so there stupid iriver. Paying for a DAP and hiding features for us.
Now make your test and post your results!!

Hooray...

[RussellS]

Is this not in the daily build yet. I have just loaded the latest build (20050813) and I cannot find the FM Radio option you mentioned.


Russell

[redmisquito]

Originally Posted by RussellS

Is this not in the daily build yet. I have just loaded the latest build (20050813) and I cannot find the FM Radio option you mentioned.


Russell

Me neither

[the_winch]

Get the bleeding edge build at the bottom of the daily build page.

http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml#bleeding_edge

[sweetspot]

Have they taken care of the issue with replay gain in the bleeding edge ? I'm talking about the bug where everything sarts becomming unresponsive. It starts with the volume control,then the volume just stops working all together, then pretty much everything gets haulted.

[linus]

Originally Posted by Sweet Spot

Have they taken care of the issue with replay gain in the bleeding edge ? I'm talking about the bug where everything sarts becomming unresponsive. It starts with the volume control,then the volume just stops working all together, then pretty much everything gets haulted.

It had nothing to do with Replay Gain, and yes, I have fixed it.

By the way, what did that have to do with FM radio and FM recording?

[sweetspot]

Ah sorry linus, it was actually alluding to whether or not I'd feel that downloading the bleeding edge was worth it with said bug. At first I thought it had to do with the optimization of the CPU, then someone brought up replay gain etc...

[Bondold]

It Works!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sweetspot]

Awesome. Listening to FM radio w/RB. What's really cool is that you can browse your HD and make settings changes while doing so. Very cool. Good work !

Whoa... (Edit by the way)

Um, not only can you browse while listening, but apparently you can also play your files while listening to the radio. I'm assuming that's a bug. Let me try and reproduce that.



Edit #2 Yeah, totally reproducable. While listening to radio, hit play to get main menu, go to any music file, play and wabash.... Hitting stop, stops the radio and the file playing.

[sweetspot]

Ok, not a bug:

edit]
fm radio stays on if i just get out the screen using "play" and choose a song, which makes them overlap...
but good thing about this "bug" is the radio stays on even when connected to usb i like that, whether it was intended or not...



This is not a bug, it's a feature. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to run plugins with the radio on.

If you want to stop the radio, leave the FM screen with the Stop button
.

[muesli]

once again great work mates....

[XavierGr]

Linus said (on irc) that there is a small distortion every 7 seconds (wave fills buffer for disk writting) though I couldn't hear it.

Make your test and post your results. I will make more tests later.

[zezayer]

distortion is only caused by interference in the reception due to HDD spin up. Its intensity varies with how strong the reception is. Only a verry faint 'pisst' tho. Perfect for recording radio shows for listening later.

[sweetspot]

Too bad there really aren't any FM shows worth recording eh ? With the FCC and the government watching (listening rather) very closely to every show out there, and threats of multi million dollar suits for using words such as crap or dick or something sililar, the range of talent just doesn't cut it on radio because they're rather unoriginal and definitely not creative when it comes to how to get around such things, or show content in general.

XM Satellite Radio...definitely the way to go. They've got good music content as well as very talented talk hosts. Not like that dried up hack Howard (HOO HOO) Stern.

[SRGilbert]

Originally Posted by Sweet Spot

Not like that dried up hack Howard (HOO HOO) Stern.

I guess you New Yorkers got sick of him even before the rest of us huh?

[skybl4ck]

And love line.... without adam corolla

whoops forgot to comment on the radio recording! very awesome

[munkifisht]

I just noticed a strange bug in the radio. When you are on the radio, and you press play, you can get to the file structure, then if you press play, as you would to get to the WPS and start to play music, your music will start to play, but the radio will still be on.

Personally, I don't see why you should not be able to get to the file structure, I am not sure, but maybe you can play rockboy with the radio on. I know that you can look at text files. Perhaps, everything but music files should be accessable when the radio is on.

To me, the radio sounds great. I think the reception is better then the IR FW, if that is possable. I just know there is a station I listen to that is fairly sketchy on reception, and now it is better.

EDIT::: Woopps, bug already commented on

[muesli]

personally i have the feeling i can receive more radio stations in even better quality!

[qwert-e]

does PCM recording have the same filesize limit that the iRiver firmware has? if not, i can set it to record 2 hour radio shows.

analogue radio sound quality is better than digital here in the uk (a lot of radio stations broadcast in 128kbps mp2, which is equivalent to about 96kbps mp3) so this would be a great feature to have.

[yyz-]

You have the same filesize limit, this is a feature of the FAT32 file system and is not linked to firmware. (Either 2gig or 4gig, Im afraid I cant remember which)

Just waiting for FM stereo to work properly now, but its very very cool

[qwert-e]

taken from 'H Series Live Recording Guide v1.0' thread...

Remember primarily the current recording restrictions:
- Recording in WAV is limited to 795MB (~75min)
- Recording in MP3 (any bitrate) is limited to 195MB (~3hr @ 128Kbps)
- Total record time is limited to 5 hours (only attainable for low bitrate MP3s)


so this seems to be a firmware limitation.

[rasher]

FAT limits files to 2gb, but Rockbox will split the recording in a new file and continue as long as the disk is not full. You can also split by other sizes, 700mb for easy cd-burning for example.

However, this is not possible with the current recording code, which is very simple and temporary.

[munkifisht]

I used the RB FM all day today in work, I{ have some serious quams. The battery was compleatly run down but finnishing time, don't know why this is, normally I get a good 8 hours after I finish to play music. I also found the volume was way to low. There was some weird dotted black line on the WPS and the reception degradded during the day. It was still quality to be able to switch between music and FM in no time on RB, but just a bit frustrating when the battery was flat as I left work. I had to listen to people rabbiting on about what micheal did to judy and someone boasting about their new tweed suit.