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TRY AGAIN:
After a couple of crashes, I rebooted and started fresh, with Audials loaded first and only, and I tried a disciplined, purposeful task.
I typed a term into the search window ( I chose “Christmas” to get some sing-alongs for an upcoming long-distance highway drive, because I think that it would be nice to not have to hunt for radio stations while driving, it would be nice to avoid advertisements, avoid talk-(yelling)-radio, especially avoid “news”, which I prefer to read in the newspaper or listen to NPR, but only when I want to pay attention to the news, more on that later, and listened to the results of Audials recording as played back from an SD card in the car’s dashboard ( or MP3-player-rig for older cars ) which would allow me to control the replay on demand of Audials recordings, and then, also, on a computer, I can look into each song file’s metadata, and I can lookup the artists other work that I might want to pursue ).
Audials responded to my search for “Christmas” with “1,200+ stations”.
So I clicked the [ > ] right-arrow on that result.
Audials started populating the lower middle panel with radio stations that promised to play songs that matched my search,
… AND Audials offered to “record all automatically” ( or words to that effect, your button labels may vary ).
Okay, I’ll try that.
I clicked on “record all automatically” ( or words to that effect ), and Audials popped up a mini-window offering 2 controls:
— how many songs do I want
— what’s my recording-quality preference
I chose 250 songs, and the best qualities ( full songs, ignore snippets ).
SUCCESS:
About an hour later, I had ’em all.
Well, ~14% were duplicates, so that means that Audials on my computer on my Internet connection can get approximately 200+ songs per hour ( variables also include the length of songs and the qualities of Internet radio broadcasters ).
Sweet.
ANALYSIS:
Of course, I can’t listen to 200+ songs per hour, so I now understand why, in the Audials lower right corner, where they offer to play something that you are pointing to elsewhere on the Audials screen, it has no necessary-relationship to what’s actually being recorded, if you are recording anything at all.
In Audials, you apparently can listen to one song at a time, or listen to one station at a time, or listen to one sequence of somethings at a time ( I do not know what are the limits of one sequence of “things” Audials will let you listen to ), and that is unrelated to whatever Audials is recording, if you are recording anything at all through Audials.
Yes, you can listen to Internet Radio, or listen to your own downloaded music files, or listen to your other music files, through Audials, without Audials recording anything at all.
Perhaps an informative title on that lower-right playback window is in order, such helpful titles for that little playback panel might be, “Now playing KZB Indiana US”, or, “Now playing and recording Bonnie Raitt “I Can’t Make You Love Me” from LMNOP De Moins US”.
Because when I first used this Audials, I was listening to something being recorded by Audials … but, as my first try-out use of the current giveaway version of Audials, I was listening to and recording only one radio station, and using Audials that way, it took half a day to record ~200 songs ( after removing ~66% duplicates — yeah, one radio station repeats a lot ! ).
So, I can get really, really productive in Audials if I let it automatically search and record, because it found as many as 42 stations offering full songs that Audials could record all at once-ish, well, in multi-threads, which for me, equals about 250 songs per hour, ~200 of them unique.
Good going, Audials.
In the background, and on other computers, I can bulk-download from other sources — using free AbelsSoft YouTube Song Downloader and other free resources — I can go elsewhere to get entire artist’s discography once I learn about new artists to look for, once Audials reveals new artists to me that I did not know about.
I may eventually try asking Audials to narrow it’s next search to only one artist, and see how it competes to my other music-gathering resources, that is, let Audials see if Internet radio stations are playing my songs.
RE-CONCLUSION:
I think Audials is an excellent resource, even an obligatory resource, for anyone into music, especially contemporary popular music ( though the Internet is expanding the word “contemporary” to mean dozens and dozens of years, and expanding the word “popular” to mean “one or fewer audience member is enough to keep us broadcasting” ! ).
Within Audials, I can look for new artists and new songs for my own reasons, for creative art, for entertainment, and even for social studies, and I can follow band contributors to other bands, I can follow song writers regardless of who sings their songs ( using creative search, even a specific artist-search or song-search, such as looking up a songwriter’s works on Wikipedia or elsewhere, then, in Audials, searching for those works one at a time by name ), and though I can only LISTEN to one song at a time, Audials offers a way to make my listening outside of Audials, whenever and wherever, very efficient, by pre-queueing up the next song, or the next 200+ songs, as quickly as possible.
I’ve been using Audials off and on for 10+ years ( and I still get flummoxed by it’s confuse-the-user interface ) and I’d forgotten how incredibly flexible Audials capabilities are.
Yet, if I, as a user, just hang in there and keep exploring Audials, and if I keep trying to figure out how to get Audials to do whatever Audials can do, I’ll find great value in Audials — and Audials apparently can do incredibly much, so much that even the Audials programmers don’t know how to reveal it all to you.
As I wrote earlier, keep trying, but keep your expectations low, but that’s low expectations of the Audials interface, not low expectations of the Audials program’s capabilities underneath the user interface.
What can we expect Audials to be able to do?.
For some examples, maybe someone will discover if Audials can record a radio station itself, not just songs … that is, if I want to record The Moth Radio Hour, or an entire symphony performance however long it takes, or record other classical music that may go on for a long time, including quiet or intentional pause-passages, compared to short and continuous pop songs, I may want to record an interview, or, for history, record the entire last day of an Internet radio station going off the air.
So, I wonder if Audials can record continuously, if Audials can record for a set time, if Audials can be set to record later for a pre-set start time, and a pre-set stop time — will Audials help in any of that type of Internet radio recording?
In revision, I now suggest that we all keep trying to master Audials, and dig to discover Audials treasure of features and benefits, because they are rich-a-plenty and well worth the patience it takes to discover them and figure them out — keep digging, and Audials will reward you for your efforts!
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