218 stations that don't stutter.
You pick the nine.
The cube comes with no list of stations someone decided are the right ones. It comes with a tested one: each of the 218 entries was connected to and held long enough to see what happens, because a stream that runs close to the wire sounds fine for a few minutes and then starts breaking. Mark the nine you want on hand, then carry the list over to the device yourself.
All — of them are below. Plenty of well-known Polish stations are not, and the section on what is missing says exactly why.
— all measured
headroom ≥ 1.5×
proven on the cube
costs you
Nine slots in the cube
That is how many stations the device holds at once. You start from the factory nine and swap in whatever you actually listen to.
Your nine
0 / 9 · the default nineThe moment you flash the system, the cube plays a nine of its own, pulled from broadcaster APIs rather than this catalogue: RMF FM · Radio ZET · TOK FM · Antyradio · Radio ESKA · RMF MAXX · Radio Plus · Złote Przeboje · Meloradio. Below you build your own list, and whatever you put there replaces them.
The list sits in your browser and nowhere else. I don't send it anywhere and have no way of seeing it. You carry it over to the cube yourself, in the station picker.
Every station
Search by name or filter by genre. Each station shows its class and measured headroom. More headroom, and the stream shrugs off a bad minute on the network.
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Why Radio Maryja, Trójka and Jedynka are missing
Each one missed the cut for a reason you can check yourself. All of them are below, including the inconvenient ones.
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AAC format
Radio Maryja and close to two hundred other stations broadcast in AAC. The only AAC decoder that would fit on this cube carries a licence that cannot be reconciled with the GPL, and Open Radio is released under the GPL, with its sources handed to anyone who asks. I could build myself a version that gets around this and keep it to myself. I don't: you get exactly the binary I run at home.
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stream too heavy
Jedynka, Dwójka, Czwórka and Polskie Radio 24, the four national channels of Polish Radio, broadcast at 192 kb/s. That works out to 23.4 KB/s, above what the cube can hold with Bluetooth running. These streams are MP3 and connect without a hitch. They just wouldn't keep up over a long stretch. One measurement on the device itself may change that, and then all four arrive at once.
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switched off at the source
Trójka is a case of its own: its MP3 stream answers with a service-unavailable notice, and what remains is AAC. The broadcaster's decision, not mine.
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barely keeps up
Rock Radio, Radio Pogoda, Radioparty, the regional Polish Radio channels and a handful of others run on headroom of 1.05 to 1.3×. They play, technically. Then the network has a rough patch and they break. They come back here once a measurement on the device vouches for them.
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quality too high
Radio Jasna Góra (320 kb/s), Radio Silesia (160), Max Hit and Safira (320) broadcast at a bitrate this device can't push through. It takes some getting used to: for a small radio, the humbler stream is the better one.
Careful with the names: Złote Przeboje and Meloradio are in the selection, with headroom of 1.66 to 1.68×. Only their smaller regional offshoots stayed out.
Tested, not promised
A database tells you what a station claims. This list tells you what it did. Every station on it was connected to and held under load, and what came out of that sorted them into two classes.
How we measure
We don't ask the database anything. We connect the way the cube does: raw socket, ICY header, audio frame detection, fifteen seconds per stream. After that only one number matters: how much faster the stream arrives than the player drains it.
Class A — 184 stations
Headroom of at least one and a half times what the player needs, and over three times for the best of them. A stream like that recovers from a bad minute on the network before you hear anything.
Class B — 34 stations
Headroom between 1.3 and 1.5×, mostly the ESKA network and its relatives. A slimmer margin, so I checked these by playing them on a real cube running 0.1 instead of trusting the arithmetic.
What we still do not know
The measurement ran from a computer rather than from the cube with Bluetooth on, and the cube is where the real ceiling sits. Which is why stations below one and a half times wait outside the list.
Getting your list into the cube
Since release 0.2 you choose stations on the cube. The picker comes up at first power-on and then lives in the settings.
At first power-on
Once you hand over your Wi-Fi, the cube asks about stations. You pick your nine from the same list you see above; the names match, so you just copy across what you put together here.
When you change your mind
The picker stays in the settings. Swapping stations takes a moment and needs no reflashing; the cube keeps your choice when you pull the plug.
Why this list lives here
Going through two hundred entries with a finger on a small screen is a chore. On a big one you can listen to the candidates and take your time. Copy the finished nine or download it as a file. It'll be there when you need it.