RÚV Noise

Icelandic public radio through a simulated FM receiver in your menubar

A tiny macOS menubar app that streams RÁS 1 and RÁS 2 with real-time audio processing. Great for background noise while you work.

Three modes — switch from the menubar:

Broadcast FM radio simulation based on how FM reception actually works:

• 50μs de-emphasis — the European FM warmth curve (corner at 3.2 kHz, −6 dB/octave)
• 15 kHz brick-wall LP — FM broadcast bandwidth limit, kills digital air
• Broadcast compression — wideband Optimod-style density
• Soft clipper — broadcast limiter, subtle odd harmonics
• FM-shaped noise — differentiated white noise through de-emphasis (triangular spectrum hiss)
• Multipath reflections — two modulated delay taps (0.5 ms, 1.5 ms) with slow flutter
• Stereo width reduction — real FM has ~35 dB separation, not infinite
• 19 kHz pilot tone — faint leakage at −50 dB, like a cheap receiver

Radio in the other room — grandma's kitchen radio heard from the living room:

1. Eldhús — Mild tube saturation (cheap amp) + small kitchen reverb (6ms, gentle feedback)
2. Doorway — Low-pass at 2.5 kHz as sound passes through the door
3. Stofa — Larger living room reverb (20ms, subtle feedback), room color at 300 Hz
4. Distance — −4 dB attenuation, quiet room-tone noise

Bypass all processing. Pure HLS stream for A/B comparison.

• Auto-tune for RÁS 1 news broadcasts (fetches schedule from RÚV GraphQL API)
• Measures actual HLS live latency for precise auto-play timing
• Tap active station to stop — no mute, no complexity

Run without opening Xcode:

./run.sh

Builds with xcodebuild (ad-hoc signed) and launches the menubar app.

Or open in Xcode:

open RuvNoise.xcodeproj
# ⌘R to run, or:
xcodebuild -scheme RuvNoise -configuration Release

Requires macOS 14+ and Xcode 15+.

Releases are built, notarized, and attached to GitHub Releases automatically when you push a version tag.

1. Create a Developer ID Application certificate — Xcode → Settings → Accounts → Manage Certificates → + → Developer ID Application. Export it as a .p12 with a password.
2. Create an App Store Connect API key — App Store Connect → Users and Access → Integrations → API keys. Note the Key ID and Issuer ID.
3. Add these repository secrets (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions):

git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

The workflow signs with your Developer ID, notarizes with Apple, and attaches a RuvNoise.dmg (drag-to-Applications) to the release.

• Swift + SwiftUI MenuBarExtra (no dock icon)
• Manual HLS segment fetching + AVAudioEngine for real-time DSP
• 50μs IIR de-emphasis, 4th-order Butterworth LP, RMS compression, multipath delay lines
• PlaybackState enum state machine — single source of truth for UI
• Native macOS — no Electron, no dependencies