What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.

I guess the other way would be to connect the radio sound output to
the audio input for the computer and record it. What's the simplest
software for taking incoming sound and recording it to an MP3 file?
(Windows XP has a built-in "Sound Recorder" program, but it only
records .wav files.)

-Bennett

"Bennett Haselton" wrote in message om...
: What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
: off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
: cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
: save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
: that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
: I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.
:
: I guess the other way would be to connect the radio sound output to
: the audio input for the computer and record it. What's the simplest
: software for taking incoming sound and recording it to an MP3 file?
: (Windows XP has a built-in "Sound Recorder" program, but it only
: records .wav files.)
:
: -Bennett

I would use my VCR.

=Bob=
bob -at- threestrands -dot- com

In article ,
Bennett Haselton wrote:
What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.

Cheapest way is to use the audio section of a VCR.
Not the best sound, but fine enough for the job. And a lot better
than low-speed logging cassettes.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Bennett Haselton wrote:

What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.

I guess the other way would be to connect the radio sound output to
the audio input for the computer and record it. What's the simplest
software for taking incoming sound and recording it to an MP3 file?
(Windows XP has a built-in "Sound Recorder" program, but it only
records .wav files.)

-Bennett

Go buy the cheap VCR at Kmart. Plug the radio output to the
VCR's line input. SLP gets you six hours on a tape. Not great
quality, but should be adequate.

--Dale

Get a cheap VHS HiFI VCR. The sound quality will be quite good. You can get up
to six hours at the slowest speed. You can dub the parts you want to keep over
to cassette.

"Bennett Haselton" wrote ...
What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.

I guess the other way would be to connect the radio sound output to
the audio input for the computer and record it. What's the simplest
software for taking incoming sound and recording it to an MP3 file?
(Windows XP has a built-in "Sound Recorder" program, but it only
records .wav files.)

Get software that records directly to MP3 (or whatever you wish).

My favorite is "Total Recorder" from www.highcriteria.com
Records directly to MP3, you can set the "timer" to record while
you are away, and costs 11.95USD You can't hardly beat that with a stick.

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
"Bennett Haselton" wrote ...
What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.

I guess the other way would be to connect the radio sound output to
the audio input for the computer and record it. What's the simplest
software for taking incoming sound and recording it to an MP3 file?
(Windows XP has a built-in "Sound Recorder" program, but it only
records .wav files.)

Get software that records directly to MP3 (or whatever you wish).

My favorite is "Total Recorder" from www.highcriteria.com
Records directly to MP3, you can set the "timer" to record while
you are away, and costs 11.95USD You can't hardly beat that with a stick.

Thanks for pointing out the MP3 recording feature!

"Richard Crowley" wrote ...
My favorite is "Total Recorder" from www.highcriteria.com
Records directly to MP3, you can set the "timer" to record
while you are away, and costs 11.95USD You can't hardly
beat that with a stick.

"Arny Krueger" wrote ...
Thanks for pointing out the MP3 recording feature!

It has other great features. I bought it to "capture" streaming
sources that cannot be saved to a file. It has a feature where
it installs a fake "driver" that grabs the bitstream going to your
real sound device and records it to a file. I understand that some
modern sound card drivers/hardware(?) allow you to do this, but
I never seem to have one of those.

I have no connection with High Criteria except as satisfied,
paying customer.

Pro Tools Free would be cheaper than the cheap VCR, and it would make it a
lot easier to cut out the commercials. File size for four hours at 16 bit
(stereo) would be about 2.4GB.


In article , "John L Rice"
wrote:

Like other's said, a cheap VCR will work well. If you want better audio
quality and smaller ( but harder to find ) tapes for storage reasons and
don't mind spending $100 to $300, get yourself a Sony DAT machine that will
record analog at 32kHz. ( like a Sony 75ES ) With a 120mm tape at 32khz you
can record 4 hours continuous. Check Ebay for starters.

Best of luck!

John L Rice


"Bennett Haselton" wrote in message
om...
What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.

I guess the other way would be to connect the radio sound output to
the audio input for the computer and record it. What's the simplest
software for taking incoming sound and recording it to an MP3 file?
(Windows XP has a built-in "Sound Recorder" program, but it only
records .wav files.)

-Bennett

--
Jedd Haas - Artist
http://www.gallerytungsten.com
http://www.antijazz.com
http://www.epsno.com

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...

"Richard Crowley" wrote ...

My favorite is "Total Recorder" from www.highcriteria.com
Records directly to MP3, you can set the "timer" to record
while you are away, and costs 11.95USD You can't hardly
beat that with a stick.

If you want to "do it all" in the PC you can get cards that have FM radios
on them.

"Arny Krueger" wrote ...
Thanks for pointing out the MP3 recording feature!

It has other great features. I bought it to "capture" streaming
sources that cannot be saved to a file. It has a feature where
it installs a fake "driver" that grabs the bitstream going to your
real sound device and records it to a file. I understand that some
modern sound card drivers/hardware(?) allow you to do this, but
I never seem to have one of those.

This is the classic Total Recorder feature that I paid for and love.

I bought TR to test audio compression programs that don't have standard
features for decoding to a file. I've found that its good for lots of
things. Capturing the sound from Real Audio streams is a common application,
I understand.


I have no connection with High Criteria except as satisfied,
paying customer.

ditto.

Hi,

A couple of people suggested using a VCR to tape the audio, so I'm
trying to set one up to do that, but I wanted to ask for some help
since I don't know anything about A/V equipment.

My VCR (bought new in 1999) has four RCA plugs on the back: Video Out,
Audio Out, Video In, and Audio In. I went to Radio Shack and got an
RCA-to-1/8-inch converter, so that I could plug the 1/8-inch end into
the headphones jack on the radio, and plug one of the RCA plugs into
the Audio In jack on the VCR. (There are two RCA plugs on one end of
the converter, a red and a white one, presumably for left and right,
but the VCR only has one Audio In jack, so I could only plug in one.)

Before doing that, I tested it out by hooking up one of the RCA plugs
on the converter to the Audio *Out* on the VCR, and plugging the
1/8-inch plug on the other end into a male-to-female converter, so
that I could plug in a set of headphones. When I did that and turned
the VCR on, I could hear the audio of the VCR's current channel, in
the headphones (but only in one ear, as expected, since only one RCA
plug can be plugged in). So far so good.

But when I tried plugging the 1/8-inch plug on the converter into the
radio headphones jack, and plugging the red (or the white) RCA plug
into the Audio In jack on the VCR, turning on the TV just displayed
the picture and sound for whatever channel the VCR was set to. And
recording on a cassette just recorded the picture and sound for that
channel. The audio from the radio was ignored.

So I thought maybe the TV cable connected to the VCR was overriding
the Audio In signal, so I disconnected that. But after doing that,
the TV would just display a blue screen with no sound, and if I taped
anything it would record as blue screen with no sound, even while the
radio was turned on and hooked up to the Audio In jack on the VCR.

How do I get the VCR to pay attention to the Audio In signal, so that
it will be recorded if I record onto a tape in the VCR?

-Bennett

"John L Rice" wrote in message ...
Like other's said, a cheap VCR will work well. If you want better audio
quality and smaller ( but harder to find ) tapes for storage reasons and
don't mind spending $100 to $300, get yourself a Sony DAT machine that will
record analog at 32kHz. ( like a Sony 75ES ) With a 120mm tape at 32khz you
can record 4 hours continuous. Check Ebay for starters.

Best of luck!

John L Rice


"Bennett Haselton" wrote in message
om...
What would be the cheapest way to get set up to tape a four-hour show
off the radio, without having to stay by the radio and switch the
cassette tapes every 60 minutes? Regular audio cassettes can only
save 60 minutes per side. If you want to tape anything longer than
that, do you have to buy higher-end equipment and special tapes? When
I called Radio Shack, they'd never heard of anything like that.

I guess the other way would be to connect the radio sound output to
the audio input for the computer and record it. What's the simplest
software for taking incoming sound and recording it to an MP3 file?
(Windows XP has a built-in "Sound Recorder" program, but it only
records .wav files.)

-Bennett

Bennett Haselton wrote:

So I thought maybe the TV cable connected to the VCR was overriding
the Audio In signal, so I disconnected that. But after doing that,
the TV would just display a blue screen with no sound, and if I taped
anything it would record as blue screen with no sound, even while the
radio was turned on and hooked up to the Audio In jack on the VCR.

How do I get the VCR to pay attention to the Audio In signal, so that
it will be recorded if I record onto a tape in the VCR?

Your VCR should have a channel called "AV" or "line In" or "EXT" which
you program instead of 2/3/4, etc. channels.

In article , says...
Bennett Haselton wrote:

So I thought maybe the TV cable connected to the VCR was overriding
the Audio In signal, so I disconnected that. But after doing that,
the TV would just display a blue screen with no sound, and if I taped
anything it would record as blue screen with no sound, even while the
radio was turned on and hooked up to the Audio In jack on the VCR.

How do I get the VCR to pay attention to the Audio In signal, so that
it will be recorded if I record onto a tape in the VCR?

Your VCR should have a channel called "AV" or "line In" or "EXT" which
you program instead of 2/3/4, etc. channels.

It may be called channel 0 in some models?

"Bennett Haselton" wrote ...
How do I get the VCR to pay attention to the Audio In signal,
so that it will be recorded if I record onto a tape in the VCR?

1. Be sure you understand how to SELECT the external
audio/video input. Consult the manual for the VCR.

2. Note that SOME VCRs will NOT record audio-only.
They require having some video input to synchronize to.

Of course, if you are going to end up converting to MP3
(or some computer-based scheme) to listen on the road
or whatever, you are likely far better off just recording
directly on your computer.