Best Recording Device for Band Practice?

you may have seen my other post in the recording section, but I've been interested in the "self-contained" recording unit for a while. Not necessarily for "perfect" sound quality, but high enough to jam with when I play back over my stereo and be able to hear, fairly clearly, different instruments, vocals etc. I have checked into digital voice recorders and self contained digital recorders.

I owned and used for two weeks the Olympus DS-2 $140 very clear accurate tone (almost CD quality) and frequency responses. downside: only good for <100db did not try with external microphone made for higher db. Records about 1 hour at highest stereo quality. easy to navigate



I wanted to try the Edirol R1 recorder. its about $450 I heard some mp3 samples off the net and it sounds even better than the new marantz pro-portable recorder. I've heard the internal gain or padding is NOT enough for high-volume situations, so again this may require an external mic and pad.
USB FILE TRANSFER.



My next re-visit to olympus is either the WS-200m (4hours recording WMA files) with external microphone. about $120 + mic.



or WS-300s I'VE HAD A HARD TIME TRYING TO LOCATE THE WS-300 SERIES IN THE U.S. but this unit has almost 9 hours highest quality recording mode. about $150



ALL of the olympus units with great sound quality are using WMA file format. frequecy response for highest quality is 100-15,000hz, except the DS-2 goes to 17,000. I haven't heard the ones that go to only 15,000, but I don't think it will be much of a sacrifice for casual recording of music and rehersals.

 

On the cheap. Goto Radio Shack and buy one of those $40 digital recorders and one of their $10 microphones. Worked to roughly (and I mean roughly, the external mic helps alot) put down our material over a two month period.

Not on the cheap (especially depending on your laptop's power). We snagged a Presonus Firepod link . Use Cubase to record our tracks. There are cheaper and simpler alternatives, but after we learn the software well enough we should be able to pump out Semi-professional cd's. If you have no recording experience the complexity of the software is overwhelming, but nothing that can't be learned, reading the manual helps tremendously . But you really need to look into if your laptop has enough horsepower to be a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I'm running an AMD XP2200 w/ 512MB of RAM and I still have to set the firepod's latency to 10-12 mS to avoid popping. I'm going to stop here. I myself was completely clueless to digital recording (or analog for that matter) until last month and I could go on for days on what I've learned. Google: home recording studio, or ,live band recording, or ,digital recording, etc.

It really depends on how much money you, or the band has. Realize that counting mics, cables, etc. You're looking at $1000.00-$1500.00 to building a decent digital recording setup, and that's not counting the computer. Now if you already have the drum mics, hp's/hp amp,cables, etc. You could look at just getting a digital mixer this looks very nice indeed.

Either of these can turn into a money maker down the road. Once you learn the hardware/software you can offer recording services for bands in your area.

Develop a love for coffee, goto your local TotalitarianCorporate bookstore (Borders,Barnes-n-Nobles,etc). Find two or three books on the subject. Purchase a litre of their high-test and spend a day reading those books in their cafe.
Good luck.