recorder

Did one or two of your childhood crushes ever make you a treacly mix tape? Chances are good you listened to it -- over and over and over again -- on your Sony portable cassette player.

If so, it's time to get sentimental. Last week, a nondescript announcement out of Sony's Japanese division sounded a death knell for the portable cassette recorder/player -- a product category that helped the company rise to prominence decades ago.

The consumer electronics giant detailed how its current line of portable cassette recorders -- including the TCM-400, TCM-410, and TCM-450 -- stand as the company's last and will be discontinued by January. In a side announcement, a Sony representative noted that the company plans to continue selling blank cassette tapes, tape decks, and boomboxes with cassette support -- for now. … Read more

In addition to being tucked into a very user-friendly package, this full software suite comes without a price tag. Though many of Ashampoo Burning Studio's features are related, it's still absurd to think about doing this much in one program. Just about anything you could want to do with or to a CD, DVD or Blu-ray is possible.

Ashampoo Burning Studio welcomed us with a nice interface. Burning, ripping and every other feature this program has to offer are well organized in a helpful menu. Simply choose the feature you want and Ashampoo Burning Studio walks you right … Read more

Readers have from time to time requested a list of the "test" tracks I use to evaluate gear. It's a long list, mostly recordings I've used for many years and heard on hundreds of products, and recordings I made myself or from sessions I attended. They work for me, but wouldn't necessarily help you. More than any specific tracks, I recommend starting with music you know best, favorite tunes you've listened to for years, and then listen to how the speaker, headphones, etc., you're considering changes, improves, or degrades the sound of your … Read more

If video games truly desensitize us as much as some people would have you believe, then Australian Okan Kaya is a much more dangerous son-of-a-gun today than he was a week ago.

Today at the suburban Sydney offices of online retailer 4Cabling where he works as a sales manager, Kaya set a new Guinness World Record for longest video game marathon, after playing more than 122 hours of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

"This journey began nearly two years ago when I first heard about the record," Kaya said in an e-mail. "Back then it was 54 hours, and unfortunately earlier this year it skyrocketed to 120 hours."… Read more

Leawo Music Recorder is an app for OS X that allows you to convert your computer into a recording machine, taking inputs from any connected devices, the built-in microphone, or even the system audio. While we liked the concept, we found some flaws in the execution.

The Leawo Music Recorder interface is clean, and it's easy to get started, with the prominent red Record button at the top. Beneath that, the left pane holds a list of your recordings, and the right pane is used for prompts and a graphic animation that shows when recording is under way. It'… Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court spent this morning wrestling with an obscure section of copyright law that could curb listings of used DVDs, CDs, books, and even GPS devices through marketplaces including eBay and Amazon.com.

Large copyright holders -- including software companies, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America -- have urged the court to limit Americans' right to resell legally purchased products manufactured outside the United States.

Many of the justices seemed skeptical. Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the copyright holders' reading of the law would invoke a parade of "horribles,&… Read more

Skype Recorder is, as you would expect, an audio recording application that can record and play back any Skype call. Despite the name, Skype Recorder can also work with most other VoIP based apps such as AIM, ICQ, MSN, and so on. Skype Recorder installs without a hitch, but .NET Framework needs to be in place.

The Skype Recorder interface is pretty basic (and not very attractive). There are three buttons to record, pause and stop recording. There's a section of the interface for setting the function hot key for these capabilities, as well. Finally, you have three options … Read more

eXtra Voice Recorder Lite is an audio recorder and audio file manager. The free Lite version is a subset of the full product available for $9.99. eXtra Voice Recorder Lite installs on your Mac OS device quickly and easily.

The eXtra Voice Recorder Lite interface is clean. The audio recording capabilities are simple to work with. The audio file manager lets you import audio files and see all of them in a simple window. Once you have an audio file selected you can annotate it with metadata, and a search function can examine the metadata as well as file … Read more

In the crowded DJ app world, VirtualDJ Home sets itself apart for the casual user. VirtualDJ Home is probably the widest-used home DJ app for the Mac, based on downloads, and there's a good reason for its popularity.

The VirtualDJ Home interface is like many others: two controllers at the top for two audio tracks, and a set of buttons, knobs, and sliders to control the mixing between the two. The bottom of the interface shows a track list and can display album art. There are some really attractive features to VirtualDJ Home, including beat matching, looping, and a … Read more