I do quiet a few miles in my car mostly business and therefore I also play a lot of cassettes when driving - I get talking books from the library. There dosen't seem a facillity to play cassettes in new cars, Is this a problem only I have ?

It's not just wicliffe - I do something very similar. I use a timer to timeshift programmes from the radio during the day and listen to the tapes to relieve boredom on long journey to work.

Now it's getting harder find cars with cassette players - what do I? Is there a more modern technology which will let me timeshift programmes off the radio and listen in the car? I wondered about whether the much-vaunted MP3s format could help - do standard car CD players play MP3 CDs? Any other ideas?

A lot of aftermarket stuff will play MP3s as well, but you can always record on a CD-R (not RW as most of those don't get along well with car players) - should give you 80 minutes per frisbee, which is pretty reasonable and close to a standard C90 (yeah I know, 10 mins diff )

Other options are minidisc (although that has never really caught on much here), or similar

10 mins short but sooooooooo much better clarity

Not too fussed about 10 mins here and there. Not too fussed about quality either to be honest - cassette quality is enough for me against noise of the car at 70 - and a lot of what I listen to is speech rather than music.

But the thing I like about cassettes is ease of recording. I have a timer on a cassette deck so it can be recorded while I'm out.

The timer switches on - the electricity gets to the tape deck- the tape starts recording.

The timer switches off - the electricity stops - the tape stops recording.

When I get home I simply remove tape from cassette deck and carry it to the car (and usually swap it for the tape I just listened to, and record over that).

Trouble with CDs (as I understand it anyway) is they have complex tables of contents and whatnot that means you can't just stop and start recording, especially when I'm not there. My suspicion is that it's tricky to record from the radio unattended. Plus as I record every day I'd have to buy a new CD-R every day if (as VW_VRS says) CD-RW won't work so well in cars. CD-Rs are cheap but not so cheap that I want to buy one a day!

Is there some technology around that I can use which will do this sort of thing? :confused:

Good ridance to cassette players I say

:sofahide:

theres room for a double din system in the fabi vrs (is that what you have?). invest in of those and be able to play both cd's and tapes. i must admit, i've a lot of eighties and early nineties stuff on tape that just doesnt get played in the car anymore(but i also know i dont have to labour through searching for individual tracks anymore since cd's came along!)

ok lets see if i am understanding you before i give you advise... you record programmes off the radio to listen to in the car on the way to work? (which is illegal but we will over look that for now) i must ask first why dont you just listen to the radio live on the way to work??

even CD players come with tuners, and also i thought the skoda range came with a syphony unit with a tape deck upfront and cd changer in the boot?

Joel

Why not use an iPod or similar MP3 player/recorder and play them through your in car system using one of those adaptor type things?

Dave.

As I understand it, recording for the purposes of listening to something at a more convenient time is actually legal, as long as you make the recording on domestic premises (which I do). So I'm alright there...

And it's the "more convenient time" thing which is why I do it. For instance I get bored with the standard morning choice of radio stations and it's good to have something else to listen to instead. Driving a loan car with CD this week made me miss the tapes.

Current old Fabia still has a cassette deck so I'm alright for a while but not sure how much longer the car itself will last. :(

So can you get adaptors which connect MP3 players and the like to a bog-standard CD player? I know you can get adaptors that work in cassette players, but can you do the same with CDs?

Hi Tech Solution

Just because I love gadgets really but here goes

[*]Get yourself a lovely shiny DAB radio that will record to flash memory cards...like The Bug, this has built-in timer record plus loads more.

[*]Locate an MP3 player that will support the same type of flash memory - loads of these around from about

Apart form trying some of the ways above there not really anyway to do this... that isnt long winded and requireing lots of add on bits of hardware... simple because the mediums are just to diffrent..

i tihnk you just going to have to deal with it until your get you tape deck back...especially as its not your car..dont want to chopping the streo wiring loom adding bits in

Joel

[*]Get yourself a lovely shiny DAB radio that will record to flash memory cards...like The Bug' date='

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Aren't there some headunits that will take memory cards?

Aren't there some headunits that will take memory cards?

Indeed there are...and they've been around for a while.

I've got a Blaupunkt LosAngeles. Plays MP3 on CD-R / RW and also has a Secure Digital / Multimedia Card slot.

Who needs a changer??

I've got a Blaupunkt LosAngles. Plays MP3 on CD-R / RW and also has a Secure Digital / Multimedia Card slot.

problem solved then, buy a Bug radio to record onto SD card's, get a Blaupunkt Losangles, stick the SD card in there. Job done!

You don't say which radio station you're recording but if it's a BBC one, you can use the listen again feature on the BBC web site to... er... listen again.

The streams aren't really intended to be recorded but you can do it with Rawavrecorder. This will produce a large wav file. To turn this into an audio CD it's simply a matter of dragging and dropping in most CD writing software. It certainly is in Nero.

If you want to convert your wav file into an MP3, I'd recommend CDex. You only need to do to transfer the recording onto an MP3 player or MP3 CD, or if you want to reduce the size of it on your hard drive.

The only tricky bit is in finding the exact URL of the RealAudio stream. If anyone has difficulty doing this, give me an example of a problem page and I'll see if I can help.

I can't bring myself to mourn the passing of cassettes. They always were awful, especially in car and portable players.