These arent really designed for field recording. It's made as a 1/2 rack space so that it can be mounted side by side with the Presonus BlueMax compressor (also 1/2 rack space) in a single rack space. You could also mount 2 of the Bluetubes side by side for 4 channels of preamp. These were really just designed as affordable pres for the home studio recordist. They are pretty noisy though. Wouldnt be too bad for the field since the ambient noise would cover the self noise of the pre, but I have heard one used in quiet conditions and you could definitely hear the preamp during quiet sections. They are decent when you use them as a DI box for an instrument, as the tubes warm up the sterile sound of an acoustic instruments pickup. Overall though I personally dont think it would warrant all the trouble it would take to power it in the field. There are too many nice pres that work in the field already to mess around with this. The Edirol UA-5 is in the same price range and is a better pre all around (except for metering).