BatCrack (Mac)
 
Don’t you love it when your favorite team makes the playoffs or is otherwise playing in some high profile game which is being broadcast nationally on some major network rather than with your local broadcast team? But don’t you hate it that you can’t listen to your favorite local radio broadcasters especially in the very biggest games of the year?!? Well the obvious answer is to turn the TV volume down and watch the game while listening to the local radio announcers. Unfortunately, the TV broadcast of the game is usually delayed by anywhere from 6 seconds to several minutes whereas the radio broadcast has no such delay on it, making syncing up the radio broadcast and TV broadcast highly annoying and nearly impossible.
 
BatCrack Radio Delay is a simple utility to delay your incoming audio by a user-definable amount. All you need is a radio and a small cable to connect the radio to the audio input on your Mac. After connecting up, fire up BatCrack, turn up the volume and set a delay time. With a few seconds of trial and error, you can fine tune the delay time to perfectly sync up the swing with the crack of the bat! Now you’re listening to your favorite announcers during the most important games of the year!
 
The easiest way to enjoy BatCrack Radio Delay is to use a transistor radio and a 1/8 inch (3.5mm) stereo mini-to-mini cable.
 

Plug one end of the cable to the audio output (or headphone out) of your radio, plug the other end into the line input of your Mac.
 
Turn on your radio and turn up the radio’s volume. You probably won’t hear anything yet.
 
Fire up BatCrack. Make sure to choose ‘Built-in Input’ for your Input, and ‘Built-in Output’ for your Output.
 
Turn up the volume in BatCrack. You should hear your radio. Make sure it’s properly tuned to your favorite sports broadcast. If you hear a lot of distortion, try turning down the volume on your radio until the distortion goes away.
 
Once you have a decent sounding signal coming through BatCrack, go ahead and try different delay times. Most TV broadcasts will be delayed by at least 10 seconds, and sometimes as much as several minutes. Start with 15 seconds (a good starting place) and keep adding or subtracting time until you feel the TV and Radio are in sync.

 
Enjoy the game. I hope your team wins! (Unless they’re playing against my team!)
 
RadioDelay (PC) 

Radio Delay With A Physical Radio Receiver

 
Refer to the connection diagram for a physical radio to get an idea of how to connect your audio cables if you have a receiver or MLB iPhone or Android app listening to the ball game.
 
Use RadioDelay by itself if you are listening to the game on a physical radio, either your AM or FM broadcast receiver, XM satellite radio, or the MLB Gameday Audio app on Android or iPhone. Plug the line output of your phone or radio into your computer’s line input using a standard stereo sound cable with 3.5mm stereo plug to go into your sound card line input.
 
If your radio only has speaker outputs it will blow away your sound card input if you just hook it up directly. Radio Shack sells an attenuating patch cord, but it is monaural only. This doesn’t really matter since baseball play-by-play is not stereo anyway. Look for Radio Shack part number 42-2461 and get any adapters you’ll need for your particular equipment. This cable has an RCA male plug on one end and a 3.5mm mono plug on the other.
 
It’s easy to configure RadioDelay. Just tell it the input port and output port to use in your sound subsystem, select how long you want it to delay audio, then click the start arrow button.
 

 
Next, open Windows Mixer or the mixer utility that works with your sound card, go to the Playback settings and MUTE THE LINE INPUT so that you only hear the delayed audio. Each sound card uses different names for each setting, so these are only examples of my system shown here.
 

 
Then go to the Recording or Input settings,
 

 
select the Line Input where your radio is plugged in,
 

 
and set the level control to a level that sounds good to you. I find that I need everything cranked all the way up, but each setup is different so you need to adjust each link in the chain so that it sounds good to your ear.
 
Tune your radio to the desired baseball game and click the Play arrow on RadioDelay to begin the audio delay process for the number of seconds that you set with the slider control. After the passage of the amount of delay that you set, you should hear the sound come out of the speakers. If you still hear the real-time (undelayed) audio, go back to the mixer Playback settings and MUTE the Playback line where the live radio audio originates, usually named Line Input.
 
Tweak the delay setting to get the play-by-play audio to match what you see on your television. It’s best to wait for a pitch and time the ball hitting the bat or the catcher’s glove at the exact same instant that you hear it delayed from the radio.