By Bob Massey
Washington Post Staff Writer

It may take a day or two of careful listening before you realize that Washington's commercial radio hates you and wants to eat your brain. The tip-off could be any of a number of things – the short, blunt, numbingly repetitive playlists; the talk-show hosts with sailors' lexicons; the variety reminiscent of a Soviet supermarket. Had enough? All it takes is a little – well, sometimes a lot – of technical determination and patience to turn your computer into a receiver with the range of the World Wide Web.

Sure, the Internet wasn't designed to act as an airwave substitute, but never mind that; software trickery gets around the problem. The software in question is almost always RealPlayer; visit http://www.real.com to download a free copy (don't worry about the extra-cost "Plus" versions hawked there). RealPlayer takes less than 10 minutes to download using a 28.8 modem; once downloading's done, its set-up wizard will walk you through configuring everything so that when you click on a "RealAudio" link, the player will automatically run. Even while you surf the Net, it will continually receive the audio stream from your chosen site – just like conventional radio.

Unlike conventional radio, however, you can't jiggle the dial or turn the radio the other way if the reception fades out. To cram a digitally stored soundtrack down the phone line that connects your computer to the Web, music Web-casters compress the information by removing certain inaudible frequencies and skimming out redundant data. Thus, Net audio pulled down through a 28,800 bits-per-second (bps) modem sounds much like AM broadcast radio, while 56-kbps modems allow approximately FM broadcast quality sound. But CD-quality – or even real stereo – just isn't likely to happen on your home Internet account any time soon. (One low-tech way to improve the sound quality: Hook up the computer to a home stereo system.)

Other annoyances include the few seconds of sound drop-out that almost always accompany the arrival of a new Web page in your browser window – winching in that extra information tends to starve the RealAudio signal. Plus, individual Web stations can support only a limited number of listeners at a time, sometimes as few as 10 or 15, due to their own bandwidth limitations. The odds are good that RealAudio will also crash your browser at least once. Such is the way of the Web, where any piece of software that has been around long enough to be fully debugged must be obsolete.

Given the technical glitches and interruptions that can plague Web-cast music, maybe the first thing to look for online should be college radio stations, the original home of underground rock (and one almost impossible to hear in most of the D.C. area). Who can forget the charm of hearing a 45 rpm record inadvertently played at 33 rpm? Fortunately, it seems that only the best college stations in the country harbor the dedication (and budget) to simulcast on the Web. Jersey City-based WFMU http://www.wfmu.org, basically a college radio station turned pro, is something of an industry standard, playing the likes of tuba choirs, yodeling, Indonesian gamelan, kraut-rock, improv, plus new rock, pop or jazz. Other worthy college radio stations: Pittsburgh's WRCT http://www.wrct.org, San Francisco's KUSF http://www.kusf.org and Chapel Hill, N.C.-based WXYC http://www.wxyc.org.

But why stop at music that's hard to find only in your home town? You can pursue entire genres of commercially unpopular music online. Take techno, for instance, the fiercely hypnotic, rhythmic music that blares from every other pub, shoe store and corner market in Britain but remains a fringe market on American radio. You can scan the airwaves fruitlessly, or you can tune into a station like InterFACE http://interface.pirate-radio.co.uk/, a London-based "pirate" radio station gone semi-legit. Its all-volunteer army of DJs is heavy on the "drum & bass" sect of techno, and the endless permutations thereof, including but not limited to Bigbeat, Deep House, Hardhouse, Hardbag, Chillout, Northern Soul and Trance. Got that? Good. Across the Atlantic, New York's Pseudo Music http://www.pseudo.com sends out 10 channels, including hip-hop and acid jazz.

Although Washington is an international city, ethnic radio is grossly underrepresented on the air – but not on the Net. All India Internet Radio, for instance, streams news, multiple musical selections, and readings 24-hours from an English-language page at http://www.aiir.com; Hong Kong's RTHK serves up Cantonese pop at http://www.rthk.org.hk. Radio Centro Group Web-casts a smattering of Mexican radio at http://radiocentro.com.mx/live/. A set of South African radio stations comes to you via Quincy Jones's "Q Radio" site at http://www.qradio.net/countries/South_Africa/sa.asp.

Then there is the category of "Other," things that defy categorization – and that, again, D.C.'s radio stations will probably never give you. The BBC's John Peel, for instance, has been showcasing new rock for over 30 years http:// www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/listeningbooth/. (Warning: This site has been erratic of late.) GoGaGa Brand Radio files offbeat news stories, including Japanese party reports, scenes from the call to worship in Cairo and a performance by demolition artists Survival Research Labs http://www.gogaga.com. Then there's the selection at http://www.giardini.sm/radio/, which can be only described as Italian radio art.

If none of these choices appeal to you, just keep browsing. A tip: Avoid the big-name Internet-radio directory AudioNet http://www.audionet.com, which is way too cluttered with the dreck already infecting the FM frequencies. Instead, try the absurdly detailed list maintained by the people at M.I.T.'s radio station http://wmbr.mit.edu/stations/bc.html; another well-maintained index, loaded with offbeat choices, awaits at http://home.dti.net/joly/radio.html.

Comments? E-mail masseyr@washpost.com.