u/HowDoYouEvenReddit

NRSC5 Studio is a native Windows desktop app for listening to HD Radio
broadcasts with an RTL-SDR dongle. Free, MIT-licensed, no installer, no
telemetry, no account, no nag.

It stands on the shoulders of:
- Aiden / theori-io - the underlying nrsc5 decoder
  https://github.com/theori-io/nrsc5
- osmocom - librtlsdr (modern build)
  https://github.com/osmocom/rtl-sdr
- cmnybo - nrsc5-gui (Python/Tk)
  https://github.com/cmnybo/nrsc5-gui
- markjfine - nrsc5-dui (Python/GTK)
  https://github.com/markjfine/nrsc5-dui

I wanted a polished, native-feeling Windows app and a place to play with
some ideas the existing frontends don't do, so I wrote one in Rust + egui.
The app opens the RTL-SDR itself, pipes raw I/Q into nrsc5 -r -, and taps the same stream for visualization and AGC.

Highlights:
- HD1 / HD2 / HD3 / HD4 subchannel playback with persistent presets
- Live spectrum panel — 1024-bin FFT trace with SDR#-style translucent
  gradient fill, the HD digital sidebands shaded at ±129–199 kHz, and
  a 256-row scrolling waterfall underneath with a turbo colormap.
  Driven from a tap on the same I/Q stream that feeds the decoder.
- Closed-loop AGC - host-side automatic gain control, separate from
  the dongle's hardware AGC. Walks the R820T2 gain table looking for
  the setting that maximizes per-sideband MER for the signal you're
  on. Hands-off lock on stations that previously needed manual gain
  fiddling. Switchable between Auto / Manual / Hardware AGC in the
  Signal panel.
- QPSK constellation scope driven by live per-sideband MER. Watching
  the cloud condense while the AGC walks into its sweet spot is
  satisfying in a way I didn't plan.
- Album-art heat-map collage - every unique cover seen in the last 8
  hours becomes a square tile, bucketed by play count (top tiles grow
  to 6x6 cells, long tail stays 1x1). Cached to disk so it survives
  Stop/Start and full restarts. Tile cap user-adjustable (1-512).
- 24-hour rolling song log with Timeline and Top Played views, plus
  CSV export for the scrobbler crowd. Aggressive filtering keeps
  station IDs / slogans / call signs out of the log.
- TPEG traffic-tile map and 90-minute weather radar loop with scrubber
  (iHeartMedia stations only - they're the only ones broadcasting it)
- Now-Playing pane with cover art and station logo
- Live MER (upper/lower) and BER readouts
- Windows per-app volume slider (COM-based), so the app's volume
  doesn't drag your whole system with it.
- Persistent dockable tabs, dark/light themes, DPI-aware

Hardware: any generic RTL2832U + R820T2 dongle works fine. RTL-SDR Blog
V4 also supported via the bundled modern librtlsdr. Windows 10/11
x86_64. Additional SDR's are on the Roadmap. Linux is also on the roadmap
but currently blocked on replacing the Windows-specific audio path.

Repo:    https://github.com/LTCAshraven/nrsc5-studio
Release: https://github.com/LTCAshraven/nrsc5-studio/releases/tag/v0.2.1

Feedback, bug reports, and "have you tried station XYZ" reports welcome.