What is the best way to connect amp and recorder?

[jasonbe]

Do I need to buy anything else besides a cable to connect an amplifier to a tape recorder and record high quality sound? It seems as though the output level - that usually goes to the speakers from the amplifier, wouldn’t be compatible with the input level - on the tape recorder that usually comes from a microphone.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

You would normally connect the line level output of the amplifier to the line input on the recorder. You wouldn't use speaker sockets and microphone inputs.

 

[audioguru]

Isn't this the year 2008? Recordings are digital?
Haven't tape recorders been dead for about 20 years?

My cassette deck has Dolby B and Dolby C and automatically selects the type of tape. It is (was) pretty high quality.

My wife uses a VCR sometimes. It still records on tape.

 

[Torben]

Do I need to buy anything else besides a cable to connect an amplifier to a tape recorder and record high quality sound? It seems as though the output level - that usually goes to the speakers from the amplifier, wouldn’t be compatible with the input level - on the tape recorder that usually comes from a microphone.

That depends entirely upon the answers to two questions:

1) What amplifier?

2) What recorder?

Make, and model, please. We can't guess what you have.

At any rate, hooking the speaker outputs up to anything but a speaker is not going to be healthy for your gear. Don't do it. A common studio (and stage) technique is just to mic' the amplifier if it doesn't have a line output.


Torben

 

[jasonbe]

That depends entirely upon the answers to two questions:

1) What amplifier?

2) What recorder?

Torben

Thanks guys. What is meant by mic' the amplifier? The equipment that I could hook up is at home, but the equipment doesn’t have any special features - so I think that I should be able to describe the equipment. Basically, the amplifier is one that you just plug a guitar jack into. Then, on the amplifier, there is a huge headphone port for stereo headphones. The tape recorder is just a simple tape recorder like the type of tape recorder used to take notes in class. It doesn’t take the microcassettes but compact cassettes. I’d still like to get the highest possible quality recording.

The equipment might have a line level output – though I doubt it. Learning how to use only the headphone port of the amp and the microphone port of the cassette will help me.

However, an easier way of describing what I want to do might be this: Let’s say that I wanted to get a quality audio recording from a television and listen to the television at the same time. I could hook the audio port on the television up to a “Y” adapter. Then, from the Y adapter I could hook up a pair of headphones. Then, how could I connect the remaining port of the “Y” adapter to my tape recorder to get the highest possible quality recording?

 

[audioguru]

Compact cassette tape recorders have not been made for about 20 years.One that is made for recording voices will sound horrible with music. Maybe your music also sounds horrible so it might work.

A good amplifier had a tape output connector that was not affected by the volume control or the tone controls. You don't have that.

Televisions have a fixed audio output that is not affected by the volume or tone controls. You don't have that.

 

[jasonbe]

I'm pretty sure that I have a compact cassette tape recorder, though I bought the cassette tape recorder less than twenty years ago. At least I think that it is a compact cassette tape recorder - because it takes tapes that look just like the ones at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette. It is O.K. if my music sounds horrible because my music is going sound like a modem. I think that modems sound horrible, but a lot of old computers generate modem sounds - maybe to let us know that something is still being processed. Things these days are silent. It is an RCA, Model RP3503A, Type UM3/AA/R6/LR6. I looked a little closer at my amplifier, and the huge port was actually an input port. It is a First Act Guitar Amplifier, Model M2A-110 05 05 07239. It does have a line to a tape recorder in back that I did not see. However, I was just referring to it for demonstration purposes. It would not benefit me to use the line to a tape recorder because I want to learn how to communicate the headphone port of an amp - if they've got one, and the microphone port of the cassette, for other purposes. I do seem to remember my television having a headphone port, however. Maybe you can help me in a different way by referring me, for headsets, to a decibel rating of headphones, a voltage rating of headphones, a way to convert the decibel levels near different microphones into volts, or the range of volts generated by different microphones. I thought that what I might need is an attenuator. I have read what attenuators do, but I'm not sure what type I need.