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Got all the fancy expensive stuff...Help me with something simple

H

Highpines

Jan 10, 2005
202
2
Phoenix, AZ, Southern Utah
#1
O.K here's the deal, I have Cakewalk Producer ediition an M-Audio sound card, T.C Electronic stuff...blah blah blah....I have been recentely called back to play and do some recording with old friends in an old band.

My dillema...I picked up a cassett recorder at "Radio Shack (little voice recorder thing for $49.00) to just record our practices so I can work on my bass lines during the week and beleive it or not it works fine at low volumes thru an old stereo I have in my garage. My question is .... There has got to be someting better.

Iv'e looked at i-pod and at the "Sony mini disk"........is there another way to go? This isn't for recording and mastering, it's just for me to practice with....maybe a mic imput or even a descent built in mic. It needs to be digital....maybe a flashcard or something (tired of fastforwarding the tape if you know what I mean) Maybe something I can use to download to my computer for future reference.

I just want to set it in the back of the room and record practices like I do with this little cassett I have.......There has got to be something out there that will record digitally and not cost me a fortune.....Maybe I ask for too much? Thanx for listening to me rammmmmble....
 
#2
My cheap-but-great field recording rig of choice is the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. You can get them used on ebay, they have tens of gigs of storage, they record in a few different levels of mp3 or in up to DAT quality wav, and have an optical input jack. They also have firewire for quick transfers. I have used minidisk and cassette in the past and will never bother with either again after getting this.
 
#4
Actually if you got a cheap Minidisc, you can set the thing to throw a track marker every 5 minutes or so. That way you can skip ahead or back 5 minutes at a time, making searching for things pretty easy. Couple that with a little stereo mic or a boundary mic (flat ones, powered by a battery) will work fine as a notepad. Either that or you go up in scale and price and look at the palm recorders: Zoom PS-04 and similar. These use media cards to store the audio in MP3 format. They also provide some level of multi-track and effects if you ever needed that. The benefit of a media card approach is that you can yank it out of the player / recorder and use a card reader to squirt it directly into the PC. No need for extra digital-analogue-digital-analogue conversions.

Other similar products: Edirol R1, Korg PX4R, Tascam Pocketstudio 5
 
#5
msquared said:
My cheap-but-great field recording rig of choice is the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. You can get them used on ebay, they have tens of gigs of storage, they record in a few different levels of mp3 or in up to DAT quality wav, and have an optical input jack. They also have firewire for quick transfers. I have used minidisk and cassette in the past and will never bother with either again after getting this.
Click to expand...


How decent is the sound, and how easy are they to use? thanks
 
#6
MKS said:
Actually if you got a cheap Minidisc, you can set the thing to throw a track marker every 5 minutes or so. That way you can skip ahead or back 5 minutes at a time, making searching for things pretty easy. Couple that with a little stereo mic or a boundary mic (flat ones, powered by a battery) will work fine as a notepad. Either that or you go up in scale and price and look at the palm recorders: Zoom PS-04 and similar. These use media cards to store the audio in MP3 format. They also provide some level of multi-track and effects if you ever needed that. The benefit of a media card approach is that you can yank it out of the player / recorder and use a card reader to squirt it directly into the PC. No need for extra digital-analogue-digital-analogue conversions.

Other similar products: Edirol R1, Korg PX4R, Tascam Pocketstudio 5
Click to expand...
Thamx guy's......Think I have it figured out.....
 
#7
They're easy to use and sound as good as what you're putting into them. I've had very good luck both with a standalone mic preamp and mics and with running a digital signal from a digital mixer directly into it with no analog step. Awesome little unit.
 

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