Topic: mp3 Recorder for lectures

[hoserama]

Heyo,

In my biology class at UC Davis, they currently record and post the lecture audio onto their website. It's a big 200+ person lecture hall, so they've got the professor hooked up to a wireless Shure microphone system. To record the audio, they've been using a junky voice recorder set on the table...bad audience recording! I talked to the guys and took a look at the system. They had tried to record the lecture directly from the sound system, but it came out all garbled. Upon further inspection, I realized they tried to plug the line-out into the mic-in of their cheapy mp3 recorder (no line-in). No wonder why it sounded terrible.

Anyways, I thought I'd look around for a half-way decent mp3 recorder with a line-in. My experience is pretty much limited to the nomad jb3, which would work great for them except they're discontinued. Also looked into some of the iRiver recorders but wanted to know if there were other options. Anybody know a good relatively cheap mp3 recorder? Granted, could hook them up with a good recorder and have them do the mp3 compression in post, but it'd be easier to just record with a 64-128 bit rate while recording and toss up on the website.

Any input is appreciated!

[dwissl]

You might checkout the new Sony ICD-U70. I read, that it will be available in the next weeks. AS I understand it, the U70 can record in MP3, when one sets it to HQ (high quality). You can find some more info by searching for icd-u70 on Google.

[hoserama]

Yeah I saw that. Doesn't look like it has a line-in, am I reading it wrong? Tempted just to tell them to buy some used nomad jb3's off ebay.

[dwissl]

No, it doesn't have a line-in. I didn't realize, that you want something with a line-in when I first read your message, sorry.

[ddeh]

Can you put a dollar figure on relatively cheap?

[hoserama]

Can you put a dollar figure on relatively cheap?

Thinking about $150-200. I know an old MD would work fine but looking for an mp3-based recorder that will do a quick dupe onto a hard drive. And not discontinued like the nomad jb3s.