LOSTCIRCUITS

D-Link DSB-R100 USB radio

What is this? It looks like a horseshoe crab crossed with the little gizmos from the movie “Batteries not included”. A two foot antenna sticking out of the top and a cable with one USB and one stereo plug hanging out from the back of the clear lucite body. Some quite earthly looking electronic parts inside confirm that this is not from outer space but still leave the possibility that it’s the missing piece from the Mars landing ship that erroneously has found its way to our lab causing so much grief at NASA. The label on the box says D-Link USB radio. Now, D-Link is mainly known for their networking products including the first 10kb/s phone network that will be introduce shortly.

A USB radio is a new idea in that it offers the possibility to directly capture radio waves and record them digitally on the PC. True, there are recording devices out there that serve a similar purpose but they are all much more complicated and, most importantly, more expensive. In addition, the USB interface offers the option of hot plug and play without rebooting and, furthermore, saves space since the computer speakers are used. Enter the space age design and here is one of the neatest inventions for home / office computing.

In addition to listening to the radio you can also record in to Wave format with the push of a button. You can set the recording to channels (mono, stereo), sampling rate (11025, 22050, 44100 Hz), and the sampling size (8 or 16 bit). The PC Radio comes with software that lets you convert your new Wave file into Mp3 format quickly and easily.

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