Shopping for Audio Tape
 

I did a bunch of taping (off the air, primarily) through the 90s. Lots of old time radio shows, other stuff. Hundreds of tapes. I stopped because I never had time to listen to them and, besides, I was ending up with lots of duplicates.

There is a radio program I have decided to start taping each week, 4 hours. My supply of old stock TDK's that I picked up somewhere will be depleted soon. So, before I go shopping, what is out there these days? I don't need anything great, just a good, reliable general purpose tape-and something that won't cost too, too much. Anything mail order I should look at?

Are you using a cassette recorder that records at 1/4 tape speed? Or one that records at normal speed.

Normal speed. Back when I was doing a lot of fire/police scanning I thought hard about buying such a unit but never did. I have a dual record, autoreverse deck. If 120min. tapes were more reliable I would be all set for a 4 hour program, not sure if I trust them that much though. Or have they improved over the years?

When I used to tape long radio programs, I used to use video tape. No, really. A Hi-Fi stereo VHS VCR does a very good job of recording audio. Hook it up to a standalone tuner, and you can even set up the timer to record while you're away. And you can get eight hours on a standard tape in LP mode.

As for regular cassettes, last time I bought some, I got them from Batteries and Butter - they still had CrO2 tapes in stock, which have been getting hard to find as of late.

-Ian

110 minute cassettes are still more reliable then 120min tapes.

You do have other options tho, like streaming the radio station on your computer and using a program to record it (would be the cheapest option).

Or buy a c.crane VersaCorder, it can record 3:30 minutes of talk on each side of a 110min tape, the good thing about this recorder is that you can program it to stop in between commercial brakes.

But if money isn't a factor, I would recommand getting a MP3 recorder w/ build-in AM/FM radio instead.

Thanks for some good options. I am decidely low-tech. That means, the only CD players I have are DVD players, no CD in any of my personal vehicles, etc. I do need to do some upgrades, mostly so I can share some things.

I have gone the VCR route a couple times. For a number of years I recorded the MRN broadcasts of the Daytona 500 and that is how I did it once.

I record Cartalk each week and use to do it on Radio Shack Concerttape t120's the cheap ones. They work fine and are still avilable. But a few years ago I switched to a computer based mp3 recorder and plug my radio headphone plug into the microphone plug on the computer sound card. http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/M..._Recorder.html its called 3D mp3 sound recorder. It looks just like a tape player, and you can adjust the audio quality all the way from very poor voice, up tp above CD quality. My 1 hour show takes up 19MB. 48KB bit rate. You can then play it back onto a tape recorder, make a few tapes at a time to use on your low-tech stuff, re-use the tapes you have every few weeks, and always have the mp3's on your computer. (keep backups) It will save you tons of cash.

Avoid modern blank cassettes labeled "RCA." I bought a pack of these somewhere within the last five years and they were audibly inferior to anything else I had - sort of like the Tojaz and KMC cassettes years ago.

My old Maxell Golds, TDKs and Memorex tapes have held up well.