14 DAY TRIAL // I know that many of us like to listen to radio stations. I love listening to radio stations, too, and for this purpose I use my TV card which supports FM radio. But what if we have a Linux system on the computer? There are many applications for listening to radio stations in Linux and KRadio is an application that meets my expectations.
KRadio is a great application for radio and TV cards, running on top of V4L (Video for Linux, the API which is responsible for TV tuner cards in the open source system). It's an application made for KDE but it works also in Gnome and other desktop environments. It has a good looking interface, much better than other similar applications. It looks somehow like a car radio. We can see there a slider for adjusting the volume, another slider for fine tuning of radio stations. Of course, there are some buttons for different functions like power on/off the application, start and stop recording, quitting the application, setting the countdown to sleep (shut down the computer after a predetermined time).
The setup menu is full of very useful options. The first dialog is about plugins, and we find there many various add-ons which enhance our experience. I will mention plugins like ErrorLog(for error logging), QuickBar (radio station quick selection toolbar), Radio( central radio device multiplexer), RadioDocking (tray menu for KRadio), ALSA Sound Device (for ALSA output), OSS Sound Device (for OSS output), Recording (for sound recordings) and many others.
The second and third dialog are for configuring the sound system used by KRadio. KRadio can use, like every sound application in Linux, Open Sound System (OSS) or ALSA for output. ALSA configuration is more complex that the one for OSS, that's why my suggestion is to use ALSA for output.
Next section is for setting the radio stations. The search engine for stations is very accurate and you don't have to search manually like in other applications for some stations which are not identified. I had to manually fine tune only two stations. A good thing is that the fine tuning is made not through a slider, but through modifying the number correspondent to frequency of radio station.
Another option is a simple but useful one and is about selecting which radio stations will be available in the panel (quickbar).
We also have options for the user interface. In other words, we can select the way the application will look like, depending on our taste. There are options for color, text, and so on.
A fine and also useful option is for recording, as many of us like to record favorite radio shows. Although the recording configuration is simple, there are many settings that are helpful. For example, we can select the audio format of the output file, .mp3, .aiff, .au, .wav, .ogg. Well, the output quality depends very much on your sound card, so it is a good idea to have a good card if you want to take advantage of KRadio's potential.
Everyone forgets, from time to time, do to some thing or another. That's why KRadio has implemented an alarm function which can signal events at predetermined times. You can set up the day, hour, minute, second, volume and which station to turn on when the alarm sounds. There is also an option for shutting down the computer automatically at a certain time or putting it in "stand-by" state.
The last option from configuration menu is for V4L settings and you can make some extra adjustments here. For example, you can select the radio device (if you have more that one tuner card), you can select the channel for output from the sound card, station scan step (very important if you like to do some fine tuning), minimum signal quality and you can even set up the V4L mixer levels.
The Good
KRadio is full of features and has everything what a normal user could ask for. It's also very easy to use.
The Bad
I consider KRadio the best application for listening radio stations in Linux. But a weak point is maybe that it ships with some plugins which I don't find very useful.
The Truth
KRadio is a nice application and full of features that get the job done. The improvements made to the application made it the best radio application in Linux.
Check out some screenshots of KRadio:
