Options and Settings

Click on the "Options" button to open the "Options" window. This window allows you to configure the important settings in Radiotracker. The various settings are organized onto tab cards. Click on the "Export Settings" tab, for example, to bring the Export tab and its associated settings to the foreground. Changes you make are preserved as you switch between tabs. When you click on the "OK" button, all changes made on all tabs are saved, and the "Edit Settings" window is dismissed.

General Settings

Minimum Bitrate

A station's bitrate affects the quality of the music being transmitted. The higher the bitrate, the better the quality. But better quality also implies a larger amount of data.

The standard setting of 128 kbit/s is in most cases the right choice. Most listeners find this quality level satisfactory. Only a few stations broadcast at a higher bitrate.

Filter

Radio stations often lace unwanted moderation, advertisements and jingles in with the music they broadcast. Using Radiotracker's filter options, you can specify the minimum length a music track must have to be classified as music, ripped and saved.

You also have the ability to wholesale exclude all far-east stations from the Stations List.

For some stations it is impossible to recognize when one song stops and when the next one begins. This leads to very large music files because Radiotracker does not know when to cut the tracks. You can set up a time limit after which a station is kicked, if there is no cutting possible.

Registration

This tab displays which version of Radiotracker you currently have installed and the licence key you are using. The button will open the registration screen on the Radiotracker Web site. You can learn more about registering your software in the section Software Registration, Updates and Upgrades..

Language

This tab lets you set the language used by Radiotracker's user interface.

Standard Settings

Click on the "Restore Defaults" button to restore all options and settings to their factory defaults.

Export Settings

This tab allows you to configure various values used during the export of recorded music tracks.

MP3 Folder

Here you can select an output folder and specify how Radiotracker should save each track on the file system. For example, you might want to specify that a subfolder should be created for each music genre.

Track comparison

During a long recording process, music titles may be played multiple times by various stations. Track Comparison lets you specify whether Radiotracker should save the title each time when it's played, or if it should only save the best version.

The difference in length is used when comparing two versions of the same title to determine which is "best." The default threshold value is 5 seconds.

Sound

On the "Sound" tab, you can select a sound card and control the general volume. The volume control functions exactly like the sound controls in the Windows control panel.

MP3s

This tab lets you configure values that influence the post-processing of recorded tracks. Several of the settings on this tab should not be modified unless you have a clear understanding of how such changes will affect your final music track.

Normalization

Internet radio stations often broadcast at different volume levels. Radiotracker's normalization function allows you to ensure all ripped music tracks have the same volume level. If you deactivate the normalization, all ripped songs will be much faster finished and avaliable but they might have different volumes.

Fade In/Out

Here you can control how long the fade in or fade out of each track should be, if such transitions are desired.

MP3 Tags

If music tracks without tags are ripped, Radiotracker can fill in the missing tags.

Splitting

Experts can control the recognition of music pieces using the Search Window and Padding settings. For more information go to Expert Settings.

Music Database Updates

On this tab you can define how much bandwidth Radiotracker should use for updating the music database. You can also specify a preferred music genre. The database will be updated with the preferred music genre first.

iPod® / mobile device

It is possible to synchronize an iPod or any other MP3-Player with the Radiotracker music-database.

Connect your iPod® or MP3-Player with the PC. Radiotracker automatically recognizes every connected device. Choose one from the list.

iPod®

If you use an iPod® you can specify a playlist to which Radiotracker has access to save or delete songs. If you do not specify any playlist, Radiotracker has only access to the main list.

MP3-Player

If you use any other MP3-Player (not iPod®) you can specify a directory to which Radiotracker has access to save or delete songs. If you do not specify any directory, Radiotracker has only access to the main directory.

There is also the option to limit the limit the storage space Radiotracker can use on your iPod® or MP3-Player.

To see how to copy songs to your iPod® or MP3-Player or how to delete them, go to iPod® / MP3-Player Synchronisation.

Splitting (Expert Settings)

Radiotracker provides some very useful features to further optimize the mp3-filesplitting.

When a station starts to play a new song, the information about the title and artist (ID3-info) is sent to Radiotracker via the station signal. This information should always be sent at the exact beginning of the new song for Radiotracker to know where it has to split the songs. Unfortunately this is sometimes not the case, which leads to mp3files that are not split correctly. The time span between the actual beginning of a new song and the sending of the ID3-information is relatively constant for each radio station.

Radiotracker offers among other features the searchwindow tool. Its purpose is to optimize the song splitting by manually moving the cut-mark ("Move station cut-mark by") and by defining the size of the searchwindow in which Radiotracker is looking for the most quiet spot to set the cut mark between two songs.
("Start split search before cut-mark / End search after cut-mark")

It is also possible to define for how long there has to be silence on a station, for Radiotracker to place a cut-mark.
("Silence detection window size")

The padding tool allows you to change the size of the recorded songs by setting how many seconds before the cut-mark at the beginning of a song, the actual recording should begin ("Left padding") and how many seconds after the cut-mark at the end of a song it should stop. ("Right padding")
With this tool you can make sure that the beginning and the end of a song are not cut off.