Recomend a digital recorder?

[Councilman]

I am looking for a digital recorder.  I currently have an Olympus VN-960PC is not very good.  I go to a lot of shows and I would like to get something that meets the following criteria:

1.  Is compatible with Windows Vista
2.  Is small enough to not be detected on the way in by security
3.  Does not cost an arm and a leg

I am open to any and all suggestions. 

[shukenja]

first of all, i would change that vista thing onto old chap XP. I dont know if vista has the official ASIO support at this stage, or any reasonable drivers to get decent audio quality whle using it. Judging by people's comments i doubt it.

Ayway, there are really 3 coming to my mind:

1. m-audio microtrack.
2. edirol r-9
3. marantz pmd 660.

now all of them have pros and cons but pmd stands ut for its xlr inputs if you ask me, + phantom power (they say microtrack has it as well but as far as i know its not real phantom, its not full 48v). its most expensive as well, so the ifrst two options are a good value for money, and the quality is noot bad either.You just have to do a forum search for these three as theres a vast number of threads with info on them, too much has been said to single point any particular thread.

I myself have chosen a pmd month ago and am overally pleased by its quality and output, no pre-amps needed, just a set of two mono mics and the unit. although im not taping anything, im doing field recording in a strict meaning. in your case, the experts form the forums will probably recommend some modifications for the purpose of gig taping.these are mor expensive tho.
you got to check on these three anyway. bottom line is the price and quality as far as i guess.check for samples on the web as well. that gives an idea what you can expect.

hope this helps a bit.

[richardl]

first of all, i would change that vista thing onto old chap XP. I dont know if vista has the official ASIO support at this stage, or any reasonable drivers to get decent audio quality whle using it. Judging by people's comments i doubt it.

I've got a friend who heard from a friend who heard from a friend (who's actually a MAC user), but he read a blog that said...

I've been using Vista on my laptop since last year with several audio apps and drivers and the news is not nearly so dire. XP is definitely a safer and more conservative bet. But there are definitely reasons to run Vista if you are so inclined.

ASIO works on Vista, but it depends on the driver. As is typical vendors vary. I've had good luck with Roland/Edirol and Line6. On the otherhand M-Audio is nowhere to be found.

Vista's new built-in HD audio is promising, but there's little if any support for it yet by applications.

My applications mostly work fine. For audio I'm mostly using Sony ACID/Vegas/Sound Forge, Ableton Live, Native Instruments. ACID and Vegas don't officially support Vista and the media database doesn't work, but otherwise things seem to work ok. The new Sound Forge supports Vista.

Most of these micro-recorders just show up like a hard drive to your system, and this works fine under Vista. Usually you are just copying files from (and sometimes to) the recorder just as if it were an external drive. I'm using my Korg MR-1 recorder with my Vista laptop. The MR-1 didn't officially support Vista until the 1.5 update, but it worked just fine before.

Here are some good reasources for using Vista for audio.
Windows Vista Musician's Resource Page (not just Cakewalk specific):
http://www.cakewalk.com/Vista/default.asp

Peter Kirn's Create Digital Music has been covering the Vista audio scene all along. Lots of driver and performance tuning info there.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/tag/vista/

[John Willett]

Small, good quality and probably undetectable - the Korg MR-1 1-bit recorder.

Looks enough like an MP3 player to get through and blows everything else away on quality as it's 1-bit recording.

[shukenja]

i wont cite quotes from other mb i participate in as its in my native language which isnt english, but:

http://www.studioauditions.com/proaudioarticledetail.php?WritingID=243

and the crucial:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html


now, i dont really know how much changed since i stopped following whole vista issue after this article. plus, from my personal experience, its allways better to wait for decent service pack, that said, if theres a time to do so.