While the concept of radio is quite old, there are still many radio fans out there. Lots of online radio applications are available, but few have such an extensive list of radio stations and are extremely easy to use at the same time. RadioTuna is a free application with an intuitive interface that lets users choose their favorite online radio stations from hundreds available.
Installation & Requirements
RadioTuna has a snappy install process that requires the user to perform only a few regular settings. /no adware is involved in the installation or the program’s interface and it runs on all versions of Windows XP, Vista and 7.
Interface
RadioTuna has a minimalistic, clean interface that contains exactly what you need to listen to online radio stations without having to wander through numerous buttons and settings.
To begin with, users can choose radio stations based on genre or directly search for a station. The program covers a wide variety of genres from classical and jazz to electronica and dub. There’s even a category titled Non-Music under the Other section that features comedy, religious, sermon, spoken word and technical radio stations.
A previous and a next button let users browse through the stations of a selected genre. Any station can be saved in one of the 10 available preset slots. The program also allows you to change sound settings, namely high, medium and low range frequencies. The currently playing song title and artist are displayed, and depending on the station RadioTuna also shows album art (sometimes with a buy link).
Through the program’s settings, you can change the used audio device, buffer level, enable/disable tone controls (DSP), tray notifications and hot keys. Clicking the About link will show all the available hot keys. They are not customizable and they have a global effect, meaning they will work even if RadioTuna’s window is not the active one.
RadioTuna can be minimized in the system tray, and the icon’s context menu offers standard controls: play, pause, next, prev and exit.
Pros
– Fast and straightforward installation.
– Clean interface containing only the necessary options and controls.
– Users can choose their radio stations from a wide variety of music genres or via manual search.
– Tone controls let users optimize the sound quality of the stream.
– In some cases, the album art & buy link are available for the currently playing track.
Cons
– Hotkeys are not customizable and through their global effect can overlap with other applications.
– Users cannot add their own radio stations to the program.
Conclusion
RadioTuna offers a large list of radio stations neatly organized by music genre and a clean, minimalistic UI that’s both functional and easy to use. Along with tone controls, Radio Tuna also displays album art and allows users to save up to 10 presets with their favorite radio stations.
