I am looking into purchasing a JB3, Iriver h120 or Microtrack 2, but not sure if it is the right route. I want a device that would be good to patch to a soundboard or easy to patch into another tapers gear without causing them to much trouble!!! I live in Asheville where there is tons of taper friendly music and this summer I am traveling and hitting the 10,000 lakes fest. (if anyone is going would appreciate a patch and some mentoring advice at the shows) and catching other shows along the way. I eventually want to build a rig, but I want to start small. Back in the late 90's my brother and I recorded some show with minidisc, but it seems like that is a dieing technology. Any advice would be much appreciated!!! Thanks to everyone in advance
JB
If the R-09HR isn't out of your price range (it's $300 new; less used; see
www.soundprofessionals.com for a new unit), that's your best bet and it has somewhat decent built-in mics. You can probably find a used unit on here or elsewhere. Its predecessor, the R-01, was also pretty solid, though the preamp in it is not as good.
My familiarity with the three you mentioned is lower, but I feel like I see the most positive comments about the iRiver. But, I'll leave that to the folks that actually use them.
Honestly, if you have access to an MD or DAT and know how to get the recordings onto a computer, those options (especially a DAT) are just fine. A reliable DAT machine like an old workhouse D8 or D100 is certainly a fine unit for recording, though a bit more of a pain to transfer to computer obviously than something that records to an SD card. The MD being lossy makes it less desirable, but if it meant that I could afford some decent mics like SP-CMC-8 or Church CA14s, I'd use that or a DAT in a heartbeat.
Just my $.02.