Several here have mentioned Audacity, which is all they say it is. For recording/archiving purposes here on our local repeater I use Scanner Recorder, also free. It is not the *quality* you may be speaking of, but if only for radio communications it produces WAV files of excellent communications quality.
<http://www.davee.com/scanrec/> It is VOX actuated, so when no audio is present it simply stops recording after an adjustable time delay. It has several sample rate and compression choices. It also produces a separate text file while recording which prints the date, time, and relative time. Correllating the two makes it easy to find a segment of audio within the file when you know the approximate time of day that it was recorded. I've used this recorder for several months now, running 24/7 on an old XP box with zero problems. It records everything on our local repeater. I switch to a new audio file every few days just to keep things manageable, and let the files accumulate on the drive. I have no pencil to sharpen here, just a satisfied user. Laryn K8TVZ
