Digital audio question - handheld recorder

[lsbland]

Hi all - hoping you can help me sort out the recording formats that my new Marantz PMD661 SD card recorder is capable of. The available modes "rec formats" are:
MP3-64, -128, -192, -256, -320 or PCM-16, -24
the other choice is sample rate, options being 44.1k, 48k or 96k in PCM modes only.
I understand that these are different resolutions, and that the resulting files will be sized accordingly, PCM being bigger. I'm doing stereo two track recording with this, of live instruments. Besides the space issue, what combinations should I choose? I'm sort of feeling like I just guess... Hoping there are some digital audio folks out there that can break this down for me ... Even some of the science behind what the choices mean.
Thanks.
Link to webpage: http://www.d-mpro.com/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4405

[danclaro]

That Marantz is a great digital audio recorder. I like to record using PCM at 24 bits with 44.1 KHz sampling. This creates fairly large WAV files but the quality is great.

[jpTron]

mp3 and the number after it means it'll record straight to mp3 format which is compressed. The higher the number the better the quality. The PCM number is bits, and the other three numbers are sampling rates. Those will be wave files. If you have the room try to record in the best quality you can fit on a memory card. I'd go with what Danclaro said. 24/44.1 is a good start.