SCHOSCHIE I'm wondering why I hadn't heard of this app earlier. It's a godsend! I've been listening almost exclusively to net radio stations for the last three years while doing work, and it bugged me to have to launch the big iTunes behemoth just to tune in to the radio. Now I don't have to anymore, as FStream does just this, and it's much more lightweight and easy on the system, and it starts up in no time, and automatically re-connects to the station you were last listening to. Also, it has a nice streams manager where you can organize all your stations. FStream can also record the radio stream. I had previously bought RadioLover for this purpose (the non-free successor to the no longer updated StreamRipper X), but I didn't mind that FStream would obviate an extra app for that purpose, too. However, I was a little disappointed to realize that FStream apparently re-encodes the audio before saving it to disk, in contrast to what RadioLover/StreamRipper X does, which is basically just write the stream packets into a file and put an appropriate container around it. I wouldn't mind about the re-encoding (although I'm questioning the necessity), but it's rather heavy on the system. On my (admittedly old) machine, FStream uses up nearly the entire CPU while recording, which makes it impractical to record a radio stream while doing work. This, for me, is FStream's one major weak point (and this is why I'm giving only 4 out of 5 stars for "Features"). I've suggested to the author the possibility of recording the radio stream directly (without re-encoding), but he seems to be rather reluctant to consider it. I can't really complain though because FStream is of course free, and it's the best choice for listening to radio streams, afaik.
(Version 1.4.1) | 
