"For these band practices they are just notebook recordings to generally review how we are doing and have talking points. I just set the levels once for average listen-ability then I export. That set-levels-once-for-all-songs is nice, because it trains us to manage our volumes through the instruments better. Plus I'm recording to 18 tracks. We all know how when we start mixing we can go on forever trying to perfect things In this case I just don't care about perfect, I care about fast..."
 
 
For this I use my Tascam DR 40. Most of those recordings are actually 85% OK mostly because we balance the sound while playing. After all the goal is not to be releasing this to the public so as long as you can hear each part I'm happy. The multi track live recordings I do are attempts to make public releases after editing. It's always worth a shot, you might get a dozen good songs out of a night. 
The Tascam is certainly fast and hi quality. I often don't even break these sessions up much. Just remove all the in between song babble, convert to MP3 and pass it back to the band on USB sticks. In one case I left all the babble to point out how bad a job the front person was doing and how much time was spent flipping though stupid song books between songs. 
I only ever listen to these recording in the car for educational purposes. I love the new player my son gave me with USB playback. No more burning CD's. 
 
I agree when playing music no distraction, keep moving and bang 'em off. That's why I always had time to mess a bit with the stop/ start of recording, the rest of them were already fussing with the song books. 
I'm not about to fill my hard drives with multi track recordings of stuff we will only listen to once. So it's only when I think a performance will be worth it do I drag along my suitcase with the extra stuff needed,, this ( multi track rig) also takes an extra 15 minutes or more during set up, the Tascam about 2 minutes. 
 
Oh and not to mention the 30 minutes needed to prepare Sonar for the session. Which brings up the fact that you can spend the time before the session getting things ready which will make it nice and easy, or spend time latter sorting out a huge project after the fact..it's still time consuming one way or the other.