How to capture FLAC and Opus raw streams in MusicBee using wget.exe

[sveakul]

For capturing radio streams without transcoding in MusicBee, it's hard to beat Streamripper for most needs (https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=23506.0).  However, Streamripper cannot capture FLAC or Opus radio streams.

Those formats can be captured without transcoding using the command-line application wget.exe (https://github.com/webfolderio/wget-windows).  The large caveat is that unlike with Streamripper, the capture is not broken up by track, nor does it contain track metadata.  You end up with a continuous raw file dump of the stream as long as you keep the wget command window open.

For adding this capability to MB, go to Preferences/Tools/external application.  Find a free entry (yeah I know "good luck"), and name it e.g. Wget Flac/Opus.  In Application Path, enter "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe" (no quotes);  in the parameters box enter:

Code

/k c:\Wget\wget.exe "<URL>" -P "C:\Streams"

Change the path to wget.exe to match yours, and "C:\Streams" to match a folder where you want the streams saved.

Assign the entry a Hotkey.  Now when a FLAC or Opus stream is playing, hit the hotkey;  a command window will open, and wget will automatically start ripping the stream.  To stop the rip, exit the command window.

In the folder you saved to, you will end up with streams named with whatever the last part of the stream's URL used.  For example, the stream https://frequence3.net-radio.fr/frequence3.flac will produce a file named "frequence3.flac."  A stream URLs of http://stream.sectorradio.ru:8000/space-56 or http://s2.euer.tv:80/audio.opus will produce file names of "space-56" and "audio.opus" respectively.  If a recording of the same stream is stopped, then restarted, the restart will have "*.1" appended to the original filename to avoid overwriting the original.

Can wget.exe also grab MP3 and AAC streams?  Yes, but with the obvious limitations above you are FAR better with Streamripper for those formats!  This tutorial is for those who need a way to losslessly add FLAC and Opus streams to their available rip ability.