Hello all, my first post here but I've been lurking for a few months. Tons of great info. I have a question about recorders, but let me first give a little bit of my background info--
Currently, I've been doing taping with an MD recorder. While getting decent results, I've become rather unhappy with the noise that ATRAC compression introduces. So I naturally want to move on to something that records to 16/44 wave files. The catch is, I'm on a budget. Currently, I'm running AT853>batt box>Sharp DR-7. I am looking for a recorder in the $200-$300 range. It needs to have a clean line in jack. I record everything from choir music to rock shows to drumline (see
www.drumlineparkinglot.net ). It also needs to be handheld and very portable.
I thought that the JB3 would work out well--but I purchased it this weekend, and am unhappy with the results I am getting with line in (you can hear it in the recording every time the hard drive does it's thing). I am still at a point where I can return the unit, and use the cash for something else. Eventually, I will be able to afford an SBM-1 or the like to complement, but I will be stuck using the analog line-in for a year or so, so I would like something with decent quality.
So, in a nutshell, here's what I'm looking for:
16/44 wave recording
A clean analog line input
Level meters and adjustable record levels
Optical or Coax input (to use down the road)
Any help would be greatly appreciated--thanks in advance!!