I guess I need to explain a little bit more. LOL. You are pretty much right about the nobs and sliders bit. Pretty much every radio I have seen in the past was and is easy enough to operate. My biggest problem with my current one is that I don't know what is on the display. After seeing what Apple has done for the IPhone and IPad, I would think that something along the line of some kind of speech read out would be really nice. The area that this would be of most benefit is the freq read out. Here in the US, if I listen to a station for long enough, the station in question would give me some indication what freq I am listening to. On the freqs between 1.720 MHZ and 29.9 MHZ, This isn't always the case. With this freq range, there is a mix between AM broadcasting shortwave stations, and people talking to each other, like on walky talkys, if you know what those are. I am not too sure what they are called over in the UK. Here in the US, the CB radio stuff happens between 26 MHZ and 28 mHZ. Add to some of the mess, I guess, is that a lot of radio seems to be slowly moving to the internet. CCrain, I believe, makes a few so call internet radios that uses a data base of online radio stations to stream music and the like over the internet. As for most presets type things, I would agree, but the designers of this radio went and took something that should had been simple and added a visual twist. This radio has enough presets for 1000 radio stations. They divided this up to what is known as pages, and one button on the radio navigates through those pages. There are up and down buttons on the radio to navigate through the presets once you are on the correct page. Then there are the transceivers. I would like to get a kinwood or an Icom transceiver to use to do some chatting on the HF bands here in the US once or if I go in for the appropriate license. I guess this topic would cover just about anything dealing with radio type things. I would also like to get into some of the DStar stuff that is happening up on the VHF and UHF bands, but I really don’t know of any radio that does the digital stuff that is accessible enough to put my call in and the like to get it up and going. On the other hand, I can type in the freq just fine on the radio, and it has nobs for the really important stuff, such as tuning up and down the dial along with the audio controls. It, to some degree, rubs me the wrong way that I cannot make use of the built in clock and alarm at all sense that is totally base on me seeing the display. LOL. Anyway, I can clearly see all the controls on the front of the radio, but the user guide does not explain the lay out all that well. I had to get someone to name off all the buttons on the front until I could get them memorized. A lot of the buttons feel the same, but are in fact laid out in a pretty logical way. One more thing, the user guide, for the most part, is a bit on the thin side which does not help things a lot. Hope this helps. Anyway, if I had to guess, this is a page full and I might should finish up…

That is a shame about apple being the exception instead of the rule. I can understand if the dial on this radio didn’t have a digital read out. I do listen to most of my radio station type things over the internet as it is, and I guess I was hoping for something a bit better than what I have. I spent around $260 on this radio. Granted, I had a feature set in mine. They through in a clock, the ability to hook in an outdoor antenna if I wish along with shortwave reception. Yes, that includes with SSB reception along with a narrow/wide band button on the front. I just wish they through in the speech for that price and the clock on it is useless to me. LOL. Oh well, at least the sound isn’t too bad. The dollar amount is in US money and it is the most I spent for this kind of device. I guess If I want to have better sound on it, I could get a stereo system with good speakers. Another thing that drives me crazy here, and this may not mean anything to this topic, is that someone here in the US got the idea to mix digital radio  with analog radio and called it HD radio. LOL. I would mind as much except the fact that I see no reason to go in for that tech. It doesn’t sound that much better than the analog stations. Add to that, the switch between analog and digital versions as I move about is a bit odd at best. Don’t know why a different radio band wasn’t set aside for the digital radio stations in the US. At least the ham radio people seem to get it right when it comes to transmissions. The signal is either analog, or 1s and 0s. I haven’t yet heard any station yet that uses the DAB stander. Granted, this radio only receives analog signals. Off and on, I here about these radio looking things that connects to your network and streams audio over the internet. I haven’t got these devices yet do to the accessible problem thing. I find that my IPad works better for me at this time for that use. Anyway, I guess I will keep an eye open just in case something surfaces that is reasonable when it comes to the price. When I was using the IPod touch 3rd gen, I had this HD radio thing that hooked into the 30 pin connection. Needless to say I didn't search for a replacement when I update the IPod touch to the 5th gen and updated the IPad to the air 2. Granted, I got a walk man like reception, and I did expect that when I got it. LOL. I don't see why I should get a replacement seeing that the app I had to use with it hasn't been updated for the screen size and the like. At least that was around $50 for the device. LOL. How many remember the soney walk man? LOL.

When it comes to sounds between listening to something over FM and listening to that same thing over the internet there is a really good chance that there is not really that much of a difference. I have came across a few streams that was at bit rates that made them sound worse than it did on FM. LOL. Those streams were around 48 to 50 KBPS, and and at least some of these were in WMA. LOL. Usually these streams will need to be above 160 KBPS before I would really start to notess any amount of  differents to speek of for music stuff. This is for those MP3 streams and if there is not alot of silence. If there is alot of silence, you might be able to pick out the differents. If you notess, I said might. LOL. I find that I would have to turn the volume up louder than I like to see the differences at times. As for that discman of yours, How has it stayed running for that long? It seems like people over all seem to replace their devices every 2 to 4 years. Of cource TVs seem to be kept for longer. smart phone seem to be replaced the quickest. Laptops seemed to be replaced around four to five years or so. Another thing that might be werth noting is that I don't really hear alot about people buying radios now days. Of cource that basicly every car here in the US that people buy comes with some kind of radio installed. Thinking about it, I am willing to bit that most who listen to radio are more willing to do it over the internet on their phones over their in car systems. Not everyone does this of cource. Add to that, those who just play their music that they have store on their phone. Another thing to add to that is that alot are just willing just put in a CD. Looking at all that, I am wondering if the market for radio type programming has gotten smaller to the point where it is not werth switching like what we have done with TV and VHS to DVD to blueray. Another thing, I am pretty sure that alot of people here in the US think that The HD in HD radio means the same as the HD in HD TV means. For those who really want to know what this means in turms of radio, you could check this wikipedia article for more info. This does also seem to have a little bit about other Digital broadcasting things.

Here in the US, there is no need to have a license to receive radio or TV. The license comes in to play when you wish to transmit on said radio or TV bands. There is still music stations on the air here, but it is easy enough to find the talk show and news stations. Such news and talk stations here are easier to find on AM, but there is usually  a station or two at the vary lease on the FM band here. Here There is only one AM band and one FM band. And of course, if you want to receive some of the shortwave stuff, then all it will take is the correct receiver. The down side here is the adds. Allot of the stations here have to find their own money, so needless to say that the adds seem to do the trick for them. Let's just say that I would not want to run any station here that just focuses in on music. After all, couldn't such stations be replace by pandora and the like? As for the debates, when they come around, it is extremely easy to find a station to listen to them on and they usually do not get interrupted by adds. Add to that, they are usually better to listen over TV or radio instead of the internet. The delay is usually smaller and things don’t get choppy when the net is running really slow, like it has been known to do here where I am at times. Here in the US, a talk show is basically a show that has a few people talking to each other on radio or TV giving their views on just about anything. There are talk shows where there is just one person behind the mike, but these shows have people calling in. Sometimes, it is a Man or woman telling you how to use that brand new computer and or answering your apple watch or IPhone question on the air. Right now, if anyone is wondering, I am visiting some people out in the country and it is a challenge to get internet that is Werth anything. About the best that can be gotten here is about 3 MBPS down. Sometimes That connection will drop below .5 MBPS. LOL. Anyway, the accessible problem really comes in to play when I want something that can receive and record what it receives. At this time, I have to hook my PC or zoom H1 in to my radio whenever I wish to record something that is coming over the radio. Now days, I find that the news and talk stations are Werth listening to instead of the music station most of the time. There is usually something new on those stations, but such stations are usually a bit one sided. LOL. This means that I have to question everything. If it is a news station, there is a good chance that they will cover one side of a story, and the talk shows covers the other side, or something gets left out. Here, if you wish to make sure a station airs just your side over everything else, you got to make sure that there is something in it for them. If it is a government run station here, chances are, the government would put their spend on everything that goes over that station. So if I don’t look at the BBC with favor, you can guess why. So comes down to getting money for yourself if you’re a station, or having the government comment on what is transmitted. Either way, money to some degree comes in to play.  Whoever pays the bill has a say. The saying, “there is no free lunch” comes in to play here. Sometimes, it is refreshing to channel serf around the HAM radio bands where the only money spent is the money spent on the radio equipment itself. Here in the US, there are a few exceptions to the license rules. For example, the CB band. You can go get yourself a CB radio, and have forty AM type channels to chat with other people on. There are a few rules in place, but there is none requiring a license. Of course that means that those so called rules are usually not enforced. LOL. After all, why would you go and spend money finding a transmitter that is putting out just a bit more power than is leangle if such transmitter is easily moved and owner ship isn’t always known. LOL. Ham radio operators here in the US is given a call sign whenever they get a license and such call signs are usually traceable when they need to be. On the other hand ham radio operators are allowed to change their stations up anyway they like as long as the rules are followed. Here in the US, there is also a FM type band or two that people can get on and chat without a license, but those are usually short range hand held radios that only go about two miles or so. I am not too sure how to convert that to KM. As for me, I like so call playing with different gadgets and the like. I like to see what they can do. LOL. Doesn’t the UK have some kind of long wave ban or something? Thought I read something on Wikipedia and we know how well that can be trusted at times. LOL. Another thing, I find that I do prefer podcast over talk shows a lot. I can usually find a podcast that is more towards my likening. I guess it can be understandable why I want access to the readout on my radio, I do get why it is  done  only in a visual way which does not allow me access to the info.

I will look in to those apps. I really wish I brought this topic up before I bought the radio. LOL. What can I say. I will give the CC2E radio a look. How much radio do you get for the price? I guess that can be found out by going and looking it up. Main question should be is how well does it work for the price? I enjoy bringing in the far off  stations until they start boring me. LOL. As a side note, I guess if I want to get the best use of what I got, I better put some kind of an antenna up outdoors. Hope a receiving antenna doesn’t require all that much when it comes to making sure it is matched to what I received. Not that I don’t mind matching the antenna to the correct wave length, but I kind of want to get the full HF freq range on my radio. Somehow I think I would get a few comments if I put up a few antennas, or at least had a little bit of help. LOL. How well does the KNFB app work on a IPad? I do not have an IPhone just yet. You had a lot of different brands didn’t you?

Hmmm. Interesting. I am learning a lot on this topic, or at least it would appear so. Here I am used to the news being one sided at times and the TV receiver not requiring a license. LOL. As for the whole long wave thing, what I read may be totally or at least in part wrong. An here is a quick thing I found on Wikipedia. So take it for what it is Werth. That does sound like a nice feature of the new stream. I just really haven’t bothered upgrading from my current one to the new one. I have found the copy and pasting stuff in the correct directory to be faster than ITunes, but I also found that overcast makes a pretty good podcatching app. Add to that, the voice dream reader app and the bard app you can see why I haven’t upgraded yet. I wonder how each country is different in this regard...

And I can clearly see why you would lean more towards the stream. It isn't all that hard to put your favorite media on it and it is easier to have it where you want too. I am thinking about getting the newer one, but just haven’t got around to it yet, or at least that is part of the reason. Part of why I lean toward the IOS devices is the apps. It is nice having some of your music and books on it along with some games, but there is also a plus to having the books and music on another device. Add to that, ITunes is a pig. Yes I said a pig. Don’t know why apple had to go get rid of that side bar just to make it look like IOS. Add to that, is everything apple thinks you want to do with it from play music and movies and buying stuff from the ITunes and app store. Is it any wonder why ITunes is a challenge? Speaking in which, I need to go see how much ram ITunes really takes up. It has been running pretty good sense my last upgrade seeing that I went from 1 GB of ram on a XP machine to 16 GB of ram on a windows seven machine. Yes there has been times where the ITunes library would get all messed up, but that is usually fixed from me just reaching in to the windows backup thing and just replacing a few files each time it happens. Speaking of the computer, does anyone know about any computer controlled radios on the market? It might be interesting to see. I would like to, at some point, listen to some stuff in my local area over the internet and may find it easier to tune up and down the dial instead of finding out how exactly how to stream that station I want to listen to. Granted, a lot of stations are streamed over the net. Some requires the I Hart app, others require the tune in app. Sometimes, I might have to find the app for the network I wish to listen to.

I do use some of the artist/album/genre info when organizing my music, but the thing that really drives me crazy is when I give ITunes the correct info, it only makes that change to its' own data base. I wish it would add the info to the files in question too. I basically have music set up where I can choose a letter of the alphabet and get a list of artists (last name first) that has that letter as the first letter of their last name. then when I open that folder, I see all the albums by them. This is sort of how I got my folder structure set up. I also have a folder set aside for those albums that have multiple artists on it. In this case, I often arrange it by genre if I can. Of course things are not helped by me not having my ID3 tags right in the MP3s. I really hate how ITunes handles audiobooks at times. Things get worse when I wish to move my music around a little bit to make a bit more sense at times. As for ICloud, I really don’t trust all that much. I prefer to back my data up to other places. Yes, I have a folder set aside for audiobook on the hard drive. I even have a folder set aside for dramatized things and any described video things that I might get from the BlindMice movie vault. LOL. The only thing that keeps me hooked on ITunes is the fact I have an IPad air with 40 GB of my music on it. I doubt the stream can take a card bigger than a 32 GB. Ok ok ok, here I am just coming up with reasons. As for entertainment over all, I use my IOS devices to stream things as much as I can. over all, Now for the streams, You might want to look here to see what the differences are.

Apple isn't really known for good and well done cloud type stuff. I really don't know why apple forces people to use a music program or ICloud to back things up. Of course there is google drive and dropbox for stuff if you can get your apps to aloud you to move the data in to dropbox or google drive. LOL. I have everything in folders on my system. I haven't yet import all my audiobooks in to ITunes do to the design of ITunes. LOL. I have a misc. folder set aside for those things that I can't put or doesn't make sense anywhere else. I have found that dumping a lot of my audio books in to the voice dream reader app, and or on my stream. Game sound tracks is one thing that ITunes does not get. I have come across recordings that I don't even dare put into ITunes.

After your explanation, the reasons you gave do make sense. With me, I do have enough audio books on my computer that I have to make sure that it gets over to the devices that I want them on and that it showed up just right. I finally gave up on that and just dumped them in to the voice dream reader app or on my stream. LOL. Yes, the voice dream reader does pretty good for that. I just haven’t tried it with dramatized stuff yet. It will not be good for this if it will not handle stereo stuff. Granted, I still have to use ITunes, but at least I can drop them in the voice dream reader app itself and not have to worry about ITunes getting it messed up. Let’s see, I have a music folder for all the music I can arrange by artist or by just about any other means that I find that I needed. If you look in to my music folder, you would find that the music itself is arrange sort of like how you might would find it in ITunes. There is some difference though. The first thing that is different is that once the music folder is open, each folder that you are faced with at first is a letter and a various artists folder for those albums that don’t fit anywhere else. I have an audio folder set aside for everything else. In this audio folder, I have an “audio books” folder, a “dramatized audio” folder, an “old time radio” folder, A “TV and Movie audio” folder, and an “audio misc.”. folder. In my audio books folder, I have my audio books arranged by title seeing that I haven’t really bought enough of them on CD to really get more precise than that. Needless to say, only the music folder is in my ITunes library or at least, ITunes only knows about the music folder. LOL. I just don’t feel like trying to get my whole audio folder in to ITunes correctly. If I download something off the net and I am not too sure where I am going to put that peace of audio, I put it in the audio misc. folder until I decide. I have the MP3 to audio book converter  thing for my PC to convert somethings into M4B files at times. One difference between what you do and what I do may be due to  when I listen to my music on my IOS device, I mainly want to shuffle through all of my music while out and about and don’t really care all that much how messy it is until I want to find that song on the PC. LOL. Isn’t it kind of strange how this topic was about radios, and now it is bash ITunes. LOL. Speaking of radios, I wonder if I could find me one of the receivers that can receive the communications of the fire and police departments here in the uSA... I don’t expect to get that info here on this form based on what some people use those receivers for. Another thing, know where all the good sources for old time radio is? The internet archive is one good source, but...

Well otrcat.com is a site I have just brought some old radio stuff from.
The price is as much for the cds to be shipped and that's all.
so 5 bucks for 1 cd 20 for 4 cds.
I spent 80 bucks mainly as birthday presents and I think I had a 4 a 3 and then several 1 and 2 disk sets.
otrr old time radio reserchers is another one they have a distribution library and some of there completed stuff is found on the internet archive.
I have not touched c crane though at one point in the past before it basically died locally when I got an old receiver, shortwave basically died here and before I was looking for a good receiver.
For me this is probably not going to happen as such, as my grandpa has an old 1930s set he got back in the day.
Its not been used for ages but has good sound.
The unit is in a leather case and apart from a busted switch, its still working its quite clunky though.
However its destined to be mine after he dies since I did ask him if I could have it when that happens.
On the radio side though, there is tune in which I have not tried, global tune which apparently accesses physical radios you can tune anywhere in the world, and that sort of thing.
Here we have all our radio stations going through I heart which I have not tried.
A lot of the media companies especially for the government and other stations do band together though which basically means I can get whatever I want.
Once you have the station name though if you can get it its possible to pick up a live stream via their website.
The government controlled stations I do listen to have am fm, net, mobile app and are on I heart they also have facebook, twitter and email service.
To be honest I'd probably listen to more net streams if bandwidth was not so f**cking expensive here in new Zealand.
What I pay covers the youtube part of it, podcasts and system updates and a few other shares.
However the streams that others including myself on youtube does push it over and its almost 100 bucks as it is well over 70 anyway.
If I ever moved out I'd probably have to get a cheaper previder or go to dialup which sadly has never gone much over 10 dollars.
That will cut out basically every audio stream, game etc anything that is not text can all go to hell.
The only reason I can even afford the net now is because I live at home with my family.
So streaming on the net just for the heck of it doesn't happen.
A few tv stations are similcasted with radio stations and some have digital stations accessed over our free to air digital tv nets but that's about it.
Though of late the only time I listen to radio its from a programmed set painfully done manually by listening to stations after the batterys are changed, and then that is only in the car.
News is done via the local government national broadcast station which does not carry adds bar for itself and no bs  and sensationalised crap that all the other stations not funded by the government get.
The news is quite good as is weather.
The programs are for what I listen to are mostly ok and not much changes from day to day.
Its fair to say though I spend more time at this laptop than I spend on any other device though.
Especially since I am in reality software, I need to devote a few hours a day to gaming and such and while I do posess because of preasure from friends facebook and twitter its only for viewing and not writing anything.