If i want to record FM to a CD recorder, do i need

If you have a stand-alone component CD-R recorder for music systems, it will have a built-in ADC and analog input jacks. If you are using a computer-based burner for digital data input (and don't have a soundcard installed with its own ADC and analog inputs), then yes, you would need an outboard ADC to convert the analog signal from your tuner to digital first.

Why not consider an 8-track recorder? No refection on you, but I'm VERY bitter that FM has become total CRAP! I worked in radio during the heyday of progressive FM ('70's). FM has become a joke in creative programming, audio quality, and UNBEARABLE commercial scheduling loads. Deregulation allowed a monopoly of a few holding companies to own almost every license in all major, secondary, and tertiary market. Competition used to breed quality and diversity. Go to any city and hear the same nauseating clones, just different dial locations and call letters. Makes me wish for major sun spot activity every day! Happy Tunes (but not with FM anymore)!

With the occassional exception here and there, and then only in certain fortunate areas, I couldn't agree with Fatparrot more about the state of radio today. The FCC has conspired with the business interests to practically destroy (along with MTV) a cultural and artistic resource in this country whose loss to our musical quality of life will only be fully realized years after the irreversible damage has been done. Is this the inevitable fate of any artistic movement (in this case, popular music) whose dissemination is intimately bound up with mass media technologies? Can the internet and satellite transmission ever form communities that emulate the sorts of local variations which mark any indigenous artform with the spice of life?