AW: Portable recording device

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

Hey Byron,

warning: no first-hand experience ahead!

I did some research myself here, and although I didn't look for the exact
same thing as you did, some of my findings may help you.

In the low-price region, Zoom can't be beat, or so it seems. A (serious!)
disadvantage of their cheaper H2 model is that it obviously only offers a
three-way switch for setting input sensitivity, and none for setting micpre
gain. The H4 also allows to connect external mics which require phantom.

I remember that a lot of people (including Krispen) are using the M-Audio
MicroTrack2496 (MkII sometimes), and this one seems to be a good bang for
the buck.

If your quality requirements are higher, there's basically two ways:
1. higher-priced stuff by e.g. Fostex, Marantz etc. - they mostly differ in
the pres.
2. combine any recorder with a SPDIF input (or a PDA with a free CF slot)
with the coresound Mic2496 http://www.core-sound.com/Mic2496/1.php. I read
some rave reviews about that one by people I've come to trust in their
reviews, so if you're really after quality AND small package, this may be
the way to go (e.g. in combination with the Microtrack)

I'd like to advise agains the Korg MR-1, simply because using the DSD data
format will not make you happy any place "downstream". It seems to be a 
good
format if you record directly to 2bus and burn that to a SADC in comparison
to normal CD, but it doesn't seem to perform better than serious 24/96
solutions, and given the fact that you got all that hazzle with the non-PCM
data format, you would be happier with something else.

        Rainer