yeah spaceman, I've seen your experiences over at the irver forum and here, but I'm prob gonna go with the iriver just cause of size and slickness. Banging them hard with demands for firmware upgrades....
If I can figure out which pre amp will let me try to fix levels, I may still be able to get a decent recording.
Gonna look into the UA5 and Dmic20...off to google
spacman: you think a UA5 might work?
found them in my price range?