Installation, Testing and Comparison

There are no drivers to install, I found that Windows XP automatically recognized it as a USB Audio device, and USB Radio and installed the driver automatically. The only thing I had to install from the disk was the tuner interface.

The interface is plain but useful, across the top are twelve preset buttons, and on each side of those are the buttons to scan your presets. In the main window on the left side is an indicator as to whether the signal is in mono or stereo, next to that is the signal strength, and to the right of that is the actual frequency of the station you are listening to. Below the main window are the tuner buttons, and the standard scan/seek buttons. The stereo/mono button is located next to the tuner buttons to the left, while on the right is the mute button and the volume slider control.

Clicking the ‘Setting’ button on the tuner interface pops up the settings window, (imagine that?!) In the setting window you can customize the scan time, seek threshold, your frequency settings depending on which country you are in, and you can manually set all of your presets.

Ok, I’m sure you want to know how it works. Well that all depends on the station you are trying to pull in, where I am located, essentially in a valley, it is always hard to get a signal even on my home system and in my car as well. While inside my house some of the stations come in perfect while some don’t, about the same as any other radio or stereo in my house, so I would say that it works very well.

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On my main computer system I have a Griffin RadioShark, which is a USB radio as well, but a lot bigger, and more expensive, the USB Radio from Brando performs just as well as the RadioShark that costs three times as much. Of course though moving outside the signals all get better, as is expected. My RadioShark is sort of portable but not like this, I can put the USB Radio from Brando in my pocket and away I go.

I like to listen to music, but I also like to listen to talk radio as well in the daytime. So now when I’m on the go with my laptop I won’t have to miss a minute of Rush, or Sean Hannity!!