At 02:55 10/22/01, Kevin Brown wrote:
>Recording anything in windows of any length (beyond 30 min or so) requires
>a tremendous amount of activity (mostly disk writes). For example, a 1
>minute block of audio at 44.1kHz, 16 bit, stereo is approximately 10 MB in
>overall size. Granted you can record at lower fidelity/sample rates and
>mono which will reduce the overall filesize.
>
>However, when in the heat of battle, I d sure hate for you to lose
>contacts because your machine runs out of umph while trying to record at
>the same time.
>
>My suggestion (and it s what I do) is to locate a video cassette recorder
>in your shack. Using the audio inputs (line level) record from your rig.
>The speaker out isn t line level so be careful of your volume so you don t
>end up overdriving the VCR s lack of limiting potential on the input. By
>doing this, you can record upto 6 hours of audio on a comparatively HIGH
>fidelity VCR tape. That s 4 tapes during a 24 hour contest.
<SNIP>
I wonder if anyone has used a reel-to-reel recorder for this
purpose? With a 2400 foot tape at the lowest speed and auto reverse you
should be able to get about 8 hours per tape (a 3600 foot tape would give
12 hours) in stereo mode, and if you play the game of switching the
channels to create a mono type recording on each of the four channels you
can double these numbers. The quality should be good enough to feed into
the computer at the end to create an mp3 file. I know there might be some
problems with bleed over using the switching technique, but it may not be
too objectionable in this application.
If any have tried this, what kind of problems might have occurred
with RF getting into the recorder, and what did you do about it? And, what
kind of audio connections have you worked out? I have had some problems in
the past with one device dropping the audio level from the radio so low
that the sound card had no drive to it.
73.. Roy N8YYS
Keep West Virginia beautiful.. Grow ALUMINUM!!
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