TimeTrax gone, SXRecorder lives

What’s that? You’ve never heard of an XMPCR? Don’t worry, the rest of the world hasn’t either. You can ignore this “hairball” post as I do spring cleaning on my blog.

TimeTrax was a program that allowed XMPCR owners to listen to XM Radio on their computer. Even nicer, the program would “time shift” the recording by taking the XM meta data and recording the raw audio of a channel to an MP3 with the artist/title of the song.

TimeTrax is not really viable anymore (see the Wikipedia page), but another program called SXRecorder will do much of the same thing.

If you’re using an XMPCR 100, you’ll need to install USB drivers for your device:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

From the page: “Virtual COM port (VCP) drivers cause the USB device to appear as an additional COM port available to the PC.” So if you have the FTDI chip in a device (FTDI = Future Technology Devices International) like the XMPCR, it makes that USB device look like a serial port device, so that you can talk to COM ports.

Searching on Google for SXRecorder finds www.backpocket.com/sxrecorder/ . The software is free, but you can donate $25 or buy extra plugins for SXRecorder for $35.

You’ll need to activate your XMPCR receiver, but you can refresh your radio receiver at xmradio.com.

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