A friend of mine is going to be on a radio show Saturday morning that I can listen to on streaming audio. A couple of other friends aren’t able to listen to the show live, however, so I’d like to capture it for them to listen to later.
Any suggestions on how this can be done? I really don’t even know where to start.
I think you can use the recorder that comes with Windows and just do an audio recording. You can record from the stream as output from the sound card. I haven’t done this recently but open the recorder (Start, Programs, Accessories, Entertainment or Multimedia, depending on what version of Windows). Try this out in advance. Find a web site that has RealAudio (ideally the station you want to record from) and see if it will work. The recorder might only record off the microphone, but I think it will record from any sound card output.
I think there are tools around that allow you to capture the digital audio stream and save a copy, but I’ve not used any so I don’t have a recommendation.
The difference is that in the first method, you are capturing the analog audio and recording it to digital, whereas in the second case you are making a perfect digital copy, like ripping a CD.
I just tried it and it works like a charm recording off a RealOne audio stream from live radio. Open the Windows Audio Recorder. Start the audio stream. Press Record (red dot) on the recorder, and you’re off to the races. When the program’s over, hit Stop (square button) and then save the file.
Depending on your version of Windows, it will let you save it in a compressed format. File, Properties, select Playback format, and MPEG Version 3 will allow you to save it as an MP3 file.
Be sure to experiment well before the show starts–you don’t want to be fumbling at the crucial moment.
Thanks so much! I never knew that little recorder was in there. I’ll try it out this evening to make sure I’m all set tomorrow, and then I’ll be all set when the show starts.
I knew Dopers would come through for me!
Oops – one problem: That program only lets me record 60 seconds at a time! Anybody know how to change the length of time I can record, or another method that would work to record a much, much longer program?
Bump.
I still don’t have a working solution and the broadcast I’d like to record is in one hour (10 am Central time). Anybody have a solution? Please? Help?
Too late… but.
If you go to the end of a recording in the windows basic sound recorder program, it will tack on another 60 seconds… you can keep doing this to get an arbitrarily long recording. I’ve done this occassionally to record shiny plastic discs with audio information on them to share on P2P networks while I work out how to make a CD back-up. I doubt the quality of the audio stream was good enough for the D->A->D conversion to have been that big a deal.
Audacity is a good free option for sound recording/editing… though it might be a little feature heavy for what you wanted to do.