There have been very few products that we have reviewed over the last 14 years that I would say were truly a letdown. Unfortunately, we have come across one of the few products that fits this category. The product is from ADS Tech and is called Instant FM Music.
What Instant FM is is a combination of software and hardware that is supposed to let you not only listen to FM radio broadcasts on your computer but record them and automatically extract the songs from what it records. The extracted songs can then be saved as MP3 files or WMA files and can be synced to your MP3 player like an Apple iPod or SanDisk Sansa MP3 player.
However, after nearly 4 days of recording a single FM station in my area it has found and extracted only 2 songs and that is with it recording 24 hours a day for those 4 days. Now it mentions in the program that you can download jump start packs that once installed is supposed to speed up the process of the software finding and extracting songs. The past 4 days of recording were will all of the jump start packs installed. To make matters worse the 2 songs it found are only partially complete for some reason it didn’t extract the entire song.
The hardware portion is simple and straight forwards to use. It consists of a small flash drive like USB plug that you plug-in to a free USB port. As well as a small retractable antenna that you plug-in to a port at the opposite end of the USB device. You then install the software, answer a few questions like your zip code and it shows you a list of radio stations in your area, you choose one and start recording.
Now it says in the rather sparse instructions that it can take a day or two of 24 hours a day recording before it starts to find and extract songs. Personally, even if this worked that is just outrageous. They really expect you to leave your computer on 24/7 for several days just so this thing can learn to extract songs. And, then even if you are willing to do this it doesn’t seem to work correctly.
The software that comes with it in my opinion is a bit sloppy and confusing. You get two programs and it isn’t made very clear which you are supposed to use and why. I finally had to go to their web site to figure out what the two included programs are for and why and when I would use them. You get Snaptune One which finds individual songs, new music, live sessions and interviews. You can pause or rewind live radio, go back a whole week or longer to listen to any show again, and thanks to Snaptune One's one-of-a-kind indexing technology you can see a playlist with individual songs, interviews, live sessions, news stories or talk segments all marked out. This is the program you use to record the broadcasts so that it can extract the songs, etc. and save them as MP3 or WMA files. This is the program I used and the program that doesn’t seem to work... well worth beans.
The second included program is Instant Radio which allows you to easily tune across the FM band. Instant Radio can record live broadcasts and display RDS/RBDS data such as station call letters, radio text and more. This records everything and it doesn’t do any extracting of songs or other program materials. From what can tell you cannot load the recordings from Instant Radio in to the SnapTune so it can extract the songs for you. If SnapTune One worked the lack of this feature would be a real disappointment.
Installation of the hardware was quick and easy. The little USB plug seems well built. The little antenna seems to work well for its small size. The USB piece and the antenna is compact enough to fit in the included storage/carry bag making it very portable.
The software was easy to install and setup and the quality of the FM coming over my computer speakers was clean, clear and quite good. The real problem is that the software just doesn’t seem to work for anything more than tuning in your radio station. I don’t feel it is expecting too much to have more than 2 songs found and extracted after recording for 4 days straight.
It is also important to note that it can also tune in and record and extract songs from web radio broadcasts as well. However, since it was unable to do this with an FM station I didn’t bother with the web radio portion. It was bad enough having it running in the background for 4 days without it also tying up my broadband connection as well.
The only other concern that I have is that it would seem to me what this device is marketed to do is highly illegal. Not the listening of the FM broadcasts or the radio broadcasts but the recording and extracting of songs. I somehow don’t think that this is a whole lot different than going on to a peer to peer network and downloading the MP3 files for free. It either case you aren’t paying the recording industry or the artists for the songs. Now that being said when it does find a song it tries to indentify it using the codes that I assume most FM stations broadcast with the song. If this works you should get a song title, artist information, etc. When/if this happens the software gives you the option of buying the song or the CD. Since I never managed to get song extraction to work I don’t know how well this works, but I still doubt the recording industry is thrilled with the whole idea. At least the recording, extracting and saving of songs.
I can’t honestly recommend this product be purchased based on what it is marketed for. The software simply doesn’t work and even if it did it takes far too long to work. I can however give it a ho-hum recommendation, provided you can find it cheap enough. If all you wanted to do was listen to FM radio stations and nothing else then this might be a good product for that. I would not however pay the $49.95 price that ADS Tech is asking for it, $9.95 maybe but not much more than that.
Personally if you want to listen to music on your computer desktop or notebook you are better off encoding your CDs to MP3 files and listening to them. It is quicker, easier and the sound quality will be far better than what you will ever get from a FM Stereo broadcast and best of all the CD song extraction actually works. |
