Not so long ago I'd tape stuff from the radio to replay at my leisure and take with me on the move. I could even set the tape deck to record at a particular time and leave it to it. The trouble is now there's no cassette deck in the car and blank tapes are hard to some by. Cassettes were also a bit of a crappy medium – rewind/ fast forward; chewing etc.

I want to record stuff from the radio myself, particularly Essential Mixes (2 hours long), rather than fanny about on the internet looking for copies of programmes that other people have made. I want to listen to the recorded material wherever I like – at home, on the move etc and I don't want to be tied to a PC streaming the BBC iPlayer. What's the modern day equivalent of home taping? Ideally something straightforward to set up and use? Is there anything?

I have a laptop (with no line-in, only headphone, mic and USB sockets), broadband and a Denon DAB/FM radio/CD player mini system. The Denon has a USB port and a mini-phono socket for connecting MP3 players, plus an aux input. I have an MP3 player on my phone and a CD player/FM radio in the car. The car radio does not have an aux input. I don't mind having to buy another gadget, providing it makes my life easier. I'm thinking something which records to MP3 format, which I can then transfer to an MP3 player and play either on the home stereo or via an fm transmitter in the car. That's one stage too many already though.

Any suggestions?

Some shows are available, partly or wholly, in podcast format aswell as on iplayer, so you could download that and play it back in your motor. Some radios now have the same pause and rewind of live broadcasts that you get on PVRs / Sky Plus and can record and store in the same way too. Not sure if there are any that are portable though, and whether theres anyway to archive programmes off the radio onto other devises.

Can't help you out but how about having a look on the AVforums? I always have a butchers on there with any audio/video stuff I'm having probs with

pvr that records to sd card and something to play sd card in car?

I don't get it. You want to replace a timed radio>tape record>play in car system with timed radio>mp3 record>play in the car but that's one too many steps? So you want to buy something with an MP3 encoder that can record from its own radio source I presume? But you'll still need a method of moving it to CD. Personally music just isnt that valuable to me I must admit, but I think you'll find it hard to locate such a device without looking at something like a media server that is on all the time or maybe get a pvr so you can record from digital radio to HDD, but you'll still need to copy it off the pvr onto your chosen player.

Audacity can record from the internets

What phone do you have?

On nokia smartphones you can download stuff off iPlayer to listen to at your leisure, and some even have FM transmitters built in.

Alternatively a usb audio dongle for the laptop to give you audio in/out (about £10 on ebay, infact I have one on my desk that's no longer any use to me) then some software to record to mp3. Lots is available. You'd need a line in from a radio tho.

Alternatively, usb freeview dongle (if you have a decent antenna feed for it) and record the radio off that as mp3.

It used to be called "obsessive" then. I think it's called Aspergers these days.

Without a Line In, you're presumably going to need an external (USB or Card) soundcard to allow you to connect the Denon, assuming that the mini system actually has any sort of external outputs (I'm guessing that everything you've listed there are inputs).

The easiest way therefore, as ourkidsam suggests, would be to find the radio broadcasts you're interested in as an Internet stream and then find some software that can capture it. I've never tried capturing in this way with Audacity, but I expect Google would prove fruitful here.

Once you've got the mp3 side of things down, you're going to need a method of going from your mp3 player to the car. Depending on your source, you're either looking at an iTrip-a-like which can take a 3.5mm input and turn it into an FM broadcast that the car can pick up, or potentially a Bluetooth adapter that does similar.

I have an iAudio x5 mp3 player. This has an FM radio and it has a record function and it lets you record the radio. I have not used either function though so can't say what it's like. I do use it in the car though.

As ourkidsam says above, download Audacity. It's a free piece of software that's multi-platform compatible (PC, Mac or Linux). It's also great for just recording things, or editing them in brief.

If you want to spend a few quid on a slightly better piece of software, search for Sony's "Sound Forge Audio Studio 9". It's £35 rrp, though can be found cheaper, and it's a very very good bit of software.

Either is all you need to use to record straight from the radio, you don't need any other boxes or plugins etc. Just switch your laptop on, start streaming from the radio, open up the software and start recording! Then just save it as whatever you want when finished, and then you can put it on your mp3 player, or whatever media you wish!

I use minidisc. Bloody brilliant. Record, edit, shuffle, remix, play.

They are the future you know. 8)

Lol @ DezB. I still have a Minidisc deck with a keyboard plugged in that I used to record stuff from Later… and other satellite radio feeds and play in the car. Now I use my iPod in the car I don't bother with the minidisc any more. I have used Wiretap to record streaming audio from the Internet, and it does it very well, although the result depends on the quality of the audio stream, obviously. Certainly Wiretap and Audacity, and there are others, are the closest to taping radio.

If anything has replaced minidisc for the ability to record and edit, I'd like to know about it!

Mobile phones/MP3 players that have the ability to record FM radio, usually only do so at very low audio quality.

You need a USB a/v capture device with appropriate software. PC and radio will need to be connected and set to record at the right time.

Alternatively you need live streaming capture software which will convert streams to a format of your choice. This would mean using internet radio streams on your PC.

The other thing is to check your chosen radio channel's website to see if they do MP3 downloads of their past shows.

If anything has replaced minidisc for the ability to record and edit in high quality, I'd like to know about it!

Cheers all, plenty of suggestions to get me started, in particular the audacity etc software and the USB freeview dongle idea. I'll then get stuck in to the in-car options suggested by Cougar.

Love the Minidisc retro angle too though…

Retro? WhyIoughta!!

LOL @ DezB

I was raving about MiniDiscs to everyone back in about 1996… They were the Bees Knees, shame they never really caught on!

I think what killed them off was the falling price of CDR's and CD Recorders, which had previously been mega expensive. Suddenly the MiniDisc didn't have so much to offer any more. Though they are still a hell of a lot more robust than CD's!

Well they used to say that "Home taping was killing music".

So these days I guess the replacement for home taping is Simon Cowell.

Well when I was 8 years old I had a tape recorder the size and shape of a shoe box, and microphone on a lead and a small radio. I used to record the top 40 using that system so maybe get an MP3 recorder and hold that up to the PC speakers? Simple!