Mods, feel free to move if this is in the wrong forum. I wasn’t sure what was best.
I sent a Facebook message to a local morning radio DJ mentioning a website I had created which might be of interest to locals. He wrote back and said he’d “try to mention it” and might put it on the station’s blog and twitter feed. A week went by and nothing, so I figured that was just a nice way of saying “thanks but no thanks.”
Then yesterday I got a message saying he would put it on their blog “sometime next week.” Cool! And I know that this DJ will usually refer to blog posts on the show, saying something like, “And check out our morning show blog for this cool website I just posted about.” I’m sure I’ll know when the link is posted since I’ll probably get some extra hits, but I’m curious about whether he’ll mention it on the show and what he’ll say.
Problem. I’m out of town next week for a work-related conference. On an ordinary work day it’s no problem to listen to the radio online at my computer. And while I’m out of town I can of course listen to the station streaming on my phone - but at this conference at least part of my time will be spent staffing an exhibit booth, and I’ll also be expected to hobnob with colleagues, making wearing earbuds a bit difficult.
The show is 6-11am, Monday through Friday, and all I know is that this will be “sometime next week.” I will be at the conference Tuesday through Thursday. Does anyone possibly know of a way for me to record the show? The station does not have its own app, but it has a “listen online” page that works on both desktop and mobile devices.
I did some Googling and saw a webpage suggesting using Audacity, but I’m not sure if leaving it (or any software) running for 5 hours straight would work - wouldn’t my laptop run out of memory pretty quickly? (Or let’s say 3 hours - I normally get up at 6 anyway and probably wouldn’t need to be anywhere until almost 8.) I also saw info about some services that will record for you, but it seems to only apply to national radio shows, or local stations in major cities.
Any suggestions for how I could somehow record this?
The cassette tape is probably the easiest solution, but there is probably software that will do this for you as well, if you Google. Do you have a desktop, or is the laptop your only computer? can you attach a memory card to your laptop and have the radio feed record straight to that? you can probably get one that will hold five hours, because I have found ones that hold much longer than that in the form of audiobooks.
But back to the tape player. If you don’t have one, they are very cheap, and yes, you can still buy them. They are small, and you could have it hooked up to your phone, and with you, and have it on pause, just hitting “REC” when the show came on. Could you so that at your booth? If you have a cable that hooks up to “Aux” on a car stereo, that’s the cable you need. It looks like the plug-in for earbuds on both ends. Probably costs about $8.
Audacity will work fine if your computer allows recording of the audio stream; I use it myself for time-delayed recording.
You will need to set up Audacity to record the “Mixer Out” (or equivalent, such as “What U Hear”) – of your computer’s sound device, rather than Mic or Line In. Note that not all sound devices have such a feature.
Then, in Audacity 2.0.5 for Windows (the most recent stable version): in the top menu, click Transport, then Timer Record… – this opens a dialog box with Start Date/Time and Stop Date/Time. Fill these in with the correct dates and times of your radio show, click OK, and you’re good to go!
Thanks for all the suggestions so far. I could probably borrow a radio/tape deck from my parents, but unfortunately that option won’t work. I’ll be out of town and not within listening range of the station.
Am I missing something? Your OP says"The station does not have its own app, but it has a “listen online” page that works on both desktop and mobile devices.", so presumably being within broadcast range of the station’s transmitter does not matter.
Since it sounds as though the information that you want to record is voice-only, you can record the digital stream on your computer at, say, 56kbps bitrate with no audible loss of quality – for which a 5 hour recording would only take up 126 megabytes. You almost certainly have this amount of disk space available on your laptop.
Sorry, I had misinterpreted the two posts about using a tape deck to be suggesting I use a tape/ radio combo. I meant I’m out of radio listening range.