Replacement for cassette recorder. Digital recorder?*

I have used cassette decks to record from fm stereo for about 40 years. Cassettes are now not being made and can't be played anywhere but on your own cassette recorder. Is there a digital recorder that I can record from fm radio,and get similar quality to recording by cassette deck? I realize I must give up the direct analog sound,and record from analog to digital ,and back to analog for playback. Is this possible,not real expensive, and can I get decent quality recordings? I do have 2 cd recorders already.Always liked the idea of getting free quality music by taping fm broadcasts. It was good enough that I felt guilty about doing it.

 

Tascam CD recorders would do nicely. Still being made. $399 or so new.

 

My mind jumped to Tascam too, how about one of their solid state recorders? You can record to SD cards which are fairly cheap and transfer to PC. Tascam SD-20M Audio Recorder at Gear4music

Or just skip the middleman and record direct to a PC? You could then burn a CD if you wish.

 

Why not just use your existing CD recorders? If you prefer to use something else then I'd agree with the Tascam recommendation, even a cheap Tascam digital recorder will be capable of recording in 24/96 many times better than cassette, spend a bit more and get a larger rack sized Tascam which will have a similar layout to your existing cassette recorder, also don't forget that SD cards are dirt cheap and you will save a fortune on not buying cassettes.

 

The cd recorders are impractical for recording an fm broacast,so I'll look at the Tascam situation. I appreciate the recommendations. Exactly what I was hoping for.Now I must digitalize my 300 cassettes.

 

If your computer has RCA (ie. analog) inputs you could run a line-out from your computer then use software to capture the audio. I use a combination of Total Recorder, CD Wave Editor and EAC (for CD burning) to record anything analog from my stereo to my computer. Its not the most high-tech solution (my captures are only for me) but one of the big advantages is that you can edit the Total Recorder files with CD Wave Editor to cut out commercials and make separate files from FM broadcasts (plus there's no limit on recording time using Total Recorder). After editing the WAV source you could burn it to CD or convert it to FLAC or MP3 and put the files on a SD card (or USB stick). Personally I use a Fiio to listen to my files.

 

There are now portable radios with a built-in SD card slot and/or USB port for recording directly from the radio tuner to MP3 files. But they're made mostly for talk radio fans, so the quality is usually pretty low (128 kbps maximum).

And for the record, both new cassette tapes and cassette recorders are still being manufactured. TASCAM has a few models available (the 202mkVII and CD-A580), as well as their co-owned consumer division TEAC (the W-1200 and AD-850).

 

Cassette quality, and even FM radio quality, is easily exceeded by digital, you are only going to improve things.

A $300 solid-state recorder easily beats a $300 cassette deck.


The largely-missing feature on these is built-in networking, so you can play your recordings from anywhere.

Even an older Sansa Clip or Creative MuVo portable can record FM to MP3 or WAV.

Does the radio station have an internet stream? Are you tech-minded? PC-based Streamripper software (after you discover and extract the station's URI) lets you record the audio without the noise, multipath, antenna, and with no limit on how many stations you can record at once.

I've even got an old XP box with Edcast to "stream" the sound card audio input for recording, scheduled task scripts to record and tag particular audio shows with streamripper, IR blaster to change the station - for when your source is still an analog tuner.

 

I've been having good results with streaming to minidisc and getting very nice SQ. However, MD is basically defunct (I think TEAC/Tascam still have a couple models)...I just have a few MD decks and some discs that I held onto. Since you already have standalone CD-Rs (have several myself), no need to duplicate that effort. Besides, CD-R (& CD-RW) is fine for some uses, but maybe not the best for your needs, unless you want to limit your recording time to 79:59. Perhaps the one of the Tascam solutions noted previously or something similar would do. Don't know if you're using a computer in this context...if so, that would open up some other channels.

 

Cassettes are being made, but only type I.

There are many options, they differ mainly by convenience. Tastes differ, the following is according to mine: I would hook up a PC's sound card as recording device to your existing hifi, it can record anything the hifi is playing. You will need to fire up a recorder software such as Audacity, and save to a format that you can use. On board audio is usually good enough, but you can always get a better stereo sound card or a USB audio device [insert discussion about MP3 vs WAV vs FLAC]

They will be fine as well, I would have reservations though because the consumer grade ones require more expensive "audio" blanks, and you can't do any post on them such as normalise loudness etc.

Regarding FM broadcasts, if your station does streaming (most do) you can grab their internet stream directly - there are a number of softwares capable of doing that - and save you much of the hassle and quality loss that the various A/D D/A conversions would introduce otherwhise.

 

Your best bet is to get a potable recorder by TASCAM or ZOOM or SONY. The cheapest ones start at about 80. They record onto SD cards, which can hold many gigabytes (hundreds of hours) of data and are cheap as well. The quality will be undistinguishable from the original broadcast, so objectively better than cassettes (although subjectively you might prefer whatever the cassettes do to colour the sound, which is understandable after 40 years).

Most other suggestions in this thread are a bit weird and cumbersome to me. Don't bother with computers — these portable recorders you can hook up directly to your source, but also use them as playback devices, so they do analogue-to-digital conversion and vice-versa, and their converters nowadays are so good that it doesn't matter what you get. (The only real difference between portable recorders is the quality of their mic pre-amps, which is not applicable in your case, and the number of tracks they offer, also of no concern to you, since you only want stereo.)

 

Portable would work fine, of course, But some people (me, for example) prefer to work with a larger device. For me, that's a "look and feel" (and sometimes functionality) preference.

 

Sure. But I was answering specifically to the OP, who says he would like it to be “not real expensive”, which many of those units are, and he also mentions he would like to be able to listen to it somewhere else. I assume he meant something like his car, his friend's house or maybe even his own kitchen—you won't be carrying one of those desktop units to any of those locations, would you?

 

Not sure where OP refers to "somewhere else," unless "Cassettes are now not being made and can't be played anywhere but on your own cassette recorder" is what you mean. To me, that sounds like a reference to gear that is non-cassette. But if he did mean portability, then of course a portable digital recorder is a clear possibility. You know what is said about "assume," no? I live by that. Got a chuckle about the image of my carrying around my iMac, though.

 

The Tascam portable Dr 40 and Dr 100 ,old models are looking interesting. Yes the idea of streaming audio and getting a streaming audio recording service,is the other idea. Can't play a cassette anywhere but at home these days.

 

I have a Sony Walkman Pro that I play in my car all the time - just hook its line out to the car's aux in.

 

I would like a technology that recorded originally in analog,played in analog could be recorded in analog and played back in analog ,without any digitalization. Is this the dream of a simpleton?

 

You mean a modern format that is all analogue? I don't think there is one, all formats of the last 3 decards are digital. If all analogue is what you want, why not stick with cassette and try to improve on what you have there?

 

Yes ,some "nuclear genius" with an all new way of recording and playing in analog.

 

@outsider Sorry there is no such format. If you like analogue so much and given that you're using cassettes already, what is wrong with sticking to it? You are apparently under the impression that cassette is dead, but that is not so. There are new cassette decks and blank cassettes being made, even though both not at the top quality of the analogue era. You can really get better decks from the used market from the era when the most sophisticated decks were made, which is the mid-90s. Brandname decks from that era in good condition with all the bells and whistles can sometimes be found cheap on ebay, but prices are slowly rising because the hipsters have discovered the format. New blanks are being made by Maxell, they can be found everywhere rather cheap, but they're only type I. Unused type II tapes can also be found by ebay, but they're stock not new, and prices there are also rising.

If you don't want to go down this route, the only options are digital. But teenagers these days don't really record off FM radio, they download everything or they stream live. You probably can get your favourite FM station on the internet and save their audio stream directly.

 

The last new analog recording format that most people have access to is VHS Hi-Fi videotape. It was widely used by radio stations for recording their programming until computer hard drive recording became affordable. With a good VCR it can provide nearly CD-quality audio.

It's ironic that the music industry wanted to kill DAT because they feared the ability to create perfect digital copies of CDs would cause rampant music piracy, but the end result of technological changes is that so few people now have any means to record the audio they hear, compared to back in the '80s and '90s when almost everyone had a cassette recorder in their stereo system and could record anything they wanted.

 

I'm amazed that VHS tape could be that good. Why doesn't anybody resist the digital,except for the rebirth of records?There is a difference in the sound.If that VHS tape was that good then,they would have even better tape today.Records are an inconvenient playback option,that seems like a bizarre way of playback.Quality digitalization seems like a never ending chase that gets more and more expensive.Serious concern about sound quality is punishable by banishment.

 

So would I,but the best price for SD20M is about$230 and a DR 40 is about $110,or possibly a DR100 for about the same ,if I get lucky.

 

I have a DR40 and it's an excellent device especially at that price, I use it mostly for location recording/interviews, but it is a bit fiddly and if you want something to use in your system with similar functionality to a tape deck with no intention of taking it out and about then I'd say get a proper sized unit with standard RCA phono inputs/outputs and bigger buttons, more money, but much, much easier to use.