Topic: Wanted: field recorder with USB or RCA output for multitracking. PMD661?

[guyburns]

I'm looking to kill two birds with one mid-priced stone, the stone being a digital recorder. The birds:

• Field recording with two capacitive mikes.
• At home multitrack recording, two mikes max at one time, mostly just one, feeding into something like GarageBand/Audacity/SoundStudio.

I had settled on the Marantz PMD 661 as my field recorder, but thought it would be a good idea to have a device I can also use at home to get sound into my computer for multitrack recordings. I'm very much an amateur, so don't need anything flash, but I do want to stay away from anything too downmarket. Reliability in the field is of utmost importance, hence the PMD661. I have two questions:

Q1. Any suggestions as to units, downmarket or otherwise, that I could use in the field and for input into my computer?

Q2. I would be quite happy with a unit that has instantaneous throughput to stereo RCA sockets, which I could feed through my Edirol UA3 and then into the computer. The PMD 661 has two RCA outputs, but it is not clear from the manual if the mike inputs are fed straight through to them while recording. Are they?