Tape Recorder: The tape recorder plays audio input from simulations during Run mode. Despite the name, the tape recorder does not silently record audio input during simulations and later play it back. Nor does the tape recorder record audio input during Stop mode and play it back during Run mode. Instead, the tape recorder plays sound from simulations simultaneously with the simulations' visual displays. If a simulation is animated, the recorder can provide the accompanying soundtrack (more or less).

Sound Lab has only one tape recorder that you can place and move anywhere in the simulation window.

In the tape recorder's Properties Box, you can set the amplification of the incoming signal, either increasing the signal volume by a factor of up to 100, decreasing it by up to a factor of ten (setting of 0.1), or not changing the volume (setting of 1.0).

You can also set the tape recorders's simulation run properties: the begin time and the end time. These properties can also be set "simulator-wide" in Sound Lab's background properties, which makes it easy to coordinate the playing of the tape recorder with Smart Sound Room animations.

The sound produced by the tape recorder during run mode depends upon the devices wired to it.

When the tape recorder is wired to the following devices, the recorder plays the sound from them at time zero: the drum, flute, trumpet, violin, guitar, sustained piano keys, and tuning forks. In other words, connecting several musical instruments to the tape recorder at once will only result in a cacaphonous sound at the start of the tape recorder's "playback" as all the instruments play at the same time. If the begin time is much greater than zero, the recorder will not play sound from these devices at al.

When the tape recorder is wired to signal generators or sustained phone buttons, the recorder plays the sound from them until the simulation run ends. What the tape recorder plays when wired to microphones depends upon the set-up in the media rooms that contain the microphones and the sound sources that are generating the waves.