Replay Radio Replay Radio 5.3

There are a number of legal and not-so-legal ways to record digital music - ripping it from a CD, cassette or vinyl being the most obvious. But it's only recently become possible to create permanent copies of the tunes and broadcasts you enjoy online. Although it's clearly off-limits to distribute copyrighted music, you're on safer ground when recording broadcast radio for your own use.

Replay Radio is not the only package that's capable of recording Web broadcasts, but doing so is its raison d'etre - unlike software such as Roxio Supersonic, in which this capability is not the main pull.

Setting up Replay to start recording streamed audio is easy. Tell the software which recording source you want and how you want it to be saved. Once you've got Replay to recognise your sound card, you're ready to start recording.

Should you try to add multiple streams one after the other to your station or show list, Replay assumes each is to be scheduled and sets things up to record for the next 60 minutes. This causes a conflict, as the program cannot handle more than one feed at once. We found it easiest to select Unscheduled for every entry under Edit Show.

You can select what to record from a list of online stations or enter a URL of your own. Replay can locate audio sources that pop up on Web sites, but may not otherwise be visible. Just click the URL Finder in the bottom toolbar. This broadens the number of sites and songs at your disposal.