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There are some talk radio shows broadcast on AM that I'd like to listen to. However, they're broadcast during the day, and I can't listen to them while I'm at work, so I was in a similar situation.

Unfortunately, none of the PC tuner cards have AM tuners on them, only FM. Makes sense, since my computer equipment seems to generate a lot of interference on the AM frequencies. So, what I ended up doing was buying a GE SuperRadio III and a long headphone extension cord so that I could keep the radio in a separate room and minimize the interference.

Since I'm only running Win2K at the moment, I bought Total Recorder for US$12, which lets me make timed recordings in just about any format. (Unfortunately, no VBR for MP3, though, so I record to WAV and then convert using LAME.)

Using the "--present mw-us" flag with LAME, I can compress a three hour show down to 51.5 MB. A full week of both my favorite shows fits nicely on a CD for archiving or sharing.

I use Total Recorder to capture the audio, which is the only method I've found. Unfortunately, quality is lost in the conversion, and its one of the few programs that keeps me booting windows. Here's hoping someone uses the recently release realaudio source to come up with a better Linux solution.

All these shows take up a lot of space though. The Bantam BA350 holds 128mb + a 128mb flash card. Recharges from the USB port and works well. My favorite MP3 player to date, though it has a windows only interface.

Total recorder is your friend.

Total Recorder from High Criteria does this on Windows as well.

So what's to prevent me from having Sound Recorder open while I listen to the song?

What's stopping you is the fact that Sound Recorder is limited to thirty seconds of recording. Total Recorder, however, will fit the bill nicely. :-)

The article is over-hyped (more than is usual for The Register) - it's not necessary to download WMP9beta to play the "limited" media files, it just offers you that as the default download if you're lacking WMP or are too far out-of-date.

On WinXP with the default version of WMP (8.1 or something like that), I had to go online and pick up a license file for each track (and fill in a form on a pop-up window for the first one, giving them a BS name and address). There was no super-clever Secure Audio Path stuff when playing back the files on WMP8 and it didn't seem to notice I was ripping the stream to disk with TotalRecorder for later mp3-encoding!

(to their credit, the audio files on the CD are 192kbit WMA which does sound pretty damn good, even after MP3ing)

I would guess that this is a method for creating what is effectively a wrapper for the DVD driver, perhaps more correctly a shim. This means that it appears to be a DVD drive to the OS, and a DVD player program to the drive. This method can be employed to any hardware device - even embedded DRM methods.

Now that you've put it that way, it's not even really a new idea (except for applying it to a DVD-ROM drive). Total Recorder has done basically the same thing with soundcards for a long time. It lets you save the audio from crippleware such as RealPlayer and Windows Media Player.

You can record anything you hear. There's always analogue recording as a last resort, but I doubt they'll manage to keep out programs like Total Recorder.

This is the essense of Microsoft's Secure Audio Path. This tech basically makes it so that "controlled" content does not play on non secure drivers (i.e. Total Recorder which does more or less what you are saying). The Register had an article on Microsoft's control of the securing technology, and it's hope of keeping Real from using it.

So in the long view this is not a concern, though it does mean that presently there is no hope for real security.

Check out Total Recorder.

And the DMCA (Damned Millenium Copyright Act NEEDS to be gutted and SOON, & Copyright terms need to go back to something realistic rather than life plus 70 years. The abuse by the copyright cartel of the DMCA has grown ever more ridiculous as time goes on. Songwriters quit writing songs and file lawsuits because it's more profitible, than taking a chance at what you've done all of you life and grown proficent at. Musicians are threatened with lawsuits for sending out press packs with Xerox copies of newspaper and magazine articles reviewing a show they did or their own cd.

My money is on three days max. before there is software available to convert NAP to MP3. Remember if I can hear it I can copy it, through my Soundblaster Live it's as simple as record what you hear. In Total Recorder I can do an MP3 on the fly. Another proprietary format just adds to the confusion, without doing anything to alleviate the licensing problems that plague the online music arena, and encryption of the music, downright silly...DMusic has an article by Ben Silverman where he quotes some recording industry execs.about what they've done in the past year. Following suit won't make it better only worse. My 2 Euros worth.

You should have a look to Total Recorder . It's an app for Windows, that hooks the system audio stream. The good thing to know is that it can dump the sound it hooks to the disc. Better, it can convert sound to misc formats (including MP3, WMA and OGG) on-the-fly, using the CODEC you chose.

So you just have to connect your turntable to the Line In port, then launch the windows media tool and Total Recorder. I bet you will save a lot of time converting on-the-fly !

I did this a few times, and it worked perfectly, in no time :)

Copy the audio output with Total Recorder and then you can have it wherever you want in whatever format you want it.

All TR does is play the file and copy the audio stream (digitally of course, not with a mic, although you could) to a new file. voila!

Rent it, rip it through Total Recorder to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis or whatever, cancel. There's always a way to pirate.

Not that I'm advocating such a thing, of course, just pointing out that if someone can hear it, they can copy it just as easily. Copy protection schemes are just a waste of effort.

Whoops, that's http://www.highcriteria.com for total recorder

TotalRecorder can so something like that, although you need to normalize/clean up the sound afterwards. Might not work for MIDI, though, unless you're using a softsynth.

As long as we have Total Recorder, it's all good.

I know a guy (ahem) who subscribes to audible for audio books. But he wanted to burn them to CD and listen to them on his MP3-CD player in the car, but they required an authentication plugin for Windows Media Player to play.

Now I hear he just starts up Total Recorder and has it capture the audio to an mp3 before he goes to bed each night.

If you can access, or step between, the content management system and the audio driver, there's really no way of creating a foolproof content management system.

Luckily, you don't have to go to these lengths of entrusting an analogue stage. You need Total Recorder (latest/greatest rev).

See:

www.highcriteria.com

This is a overlay for your sound card driver, and can intercept everything going to your card and store it in a file. Your data never hits the analog stage before capture. A similar driver could be whipped up for Linux (the Open Sound System or the Linux audio driver project may support similar features on Linux, but I don't really know).

TurboD

It seems amazing to me, but there's still a product out there called Total Recorder that can be used to grab the audio stream on a Windows box and capture it to a WAV file. It even works on Windows 2000, which one would think Microsoft would have locked down the media streams within by now.

For Windows, Total Recorder will record to disk the sound output of any program. It can either play it through the sound card also, or remain silent. It can also be scheduled to start and stop at a specific time, using command-line parameters or its built-in scheduler. You can schedule RealPlayer or any other media player to start a minute or so after the time Total Recorder has been scheduled to start to create a completely automatic system to record recurring broadcasts.

On a Windoze PC you can record any audio file or streaming audio directly from the sound card itself and save it as a WAV file, using Total Recorder from High Criteria.

You have to play mix master with the levels, and you have to do all the recording in real time, but the end result is great and ready to burn to CD-R.

On a Windoze PC you can record any audio file or streaming audio directly from the sound card itself and save it as a WAV file, using Total Recorder from High Criteria.

You have to play mix master with the levels, and you have to do all the recording in real time, but the end result is great and ready to burn to CD-R.

from the article: "Steve Grady, vice president of marketing at MP3 retailer GoodNoise, said that if the record labels don't put the consumer first in their architecture plans, piracy will only increase and the industry could ultimately lose out on new business opportunities on the Web."   What's this? An industry honcho with the consumer in mind? The RIAA and the companies it represents should take a lesson from this man.   I'm not worried. If people want MP3, it will always be around. Plain and simple. As soon as SDMI starts becoming popular w/ the record companies (and it will) i'll find a cracked player (cracked not to take away from the developer(s), just not to fund the RIAA) and record the SDMI files to wav w/ total recorder as they pass through my soundcard. After all, that's how i've been converting the liquid audio and a2b "secure" foramts all along.

from the article:
"Steve Grady, vice president of marketing at MP3 retailer GoodNoise, said that if the record labels don't put the consumer first in their architecture plans, piracy will only increase and the industry could ultimately lose out on new business opportunities on the Web."

What's this? An industry honcho with the consumer in mind? The RIAA and the companies it represents should take a lesson from this man.

I'm not worried. If people want MP3, it will always be around. Plain and simple. As soon as SDMI starts becoming popular w/ the record companies (and it will) i'll find a cracked player (cracked not to take away from the developer(s), just not to fund the RIAA) and record the SDMI files to wav w/ total recorder as they pass through my soundcard. After all, that's how i've been converting the liquid audio and a2b "secure" foramts all along.