My Daughter offered to by me a new Camera for Christmas but thought she'd wait for my input. I have a better idea, I have always wanted one of those portable recorders. 

Heres what I would use it for;

Song writing ideas that hit you while sitting on the couch. 
Interviews. 
Live stereo recordings of choirs and whatever.
Record band rehearsals   

So I don't think I want/ need too many features. Just solid easy to use. It only needs to record at 44.1/24 bit as that's my preferred  format. 

So anybody out there own one of these and having good long term results, Any tips on features that make a difference? 

I would like to keep the price under $200 as I believe the camera would have been. 

Thanks and hope everyone's having a great holiday

Hi there,
A while back I bought the M-Audio MicroTrack. It the price was around $250. I was very pleased, I recorded almost everything on it. Solid device lots of options and I could operate it with closed eyes. I gave it to my father for him to use it and never got it back... lol
If you want to shop on ebay I am sure you ll find it for less than $200.
Other than that the TASCAM DR-07mkII seems like will do the job just fine and you still have change for a few adaptors and cables!

Good luck!

Thanks

SO far I found this one which has xlr inputs, most seem to have 1/8" 

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/John/My%20Documents/Recorders/TASCAM%20DR-40%20Portable%20Digital%20Recorder%20%20%20Musician's%20Friend.htm

If you can afford about $269, a Zoom R8 would be a good option. Recorded a band rehearsal with the built-in mics and it recorded surprisingly good. It uses SD cards and runs completely silent. Here's a review from Anderton that helped convince me to get it: http://acapella.harmony-c...r-Interface-Controller

I own the Tascam DR-40 and am quite pleased with it overall.

Decent onboard pre's (notice I said decent, not awesome....but for what I paid for it, I'm not complaining a bit....you can always use external pre's for your "offboard" mics)

The battery life isn't bad (it suffers if you start using phantom power on more than one mic at a time, though)

So....a few sdhc cards, some spare batteries, maybe a couple of your own mics, and you are good to go with what I think is a good recorder!  And, you could also use external pres, as I said.....I'll use my Mackie running into the DR-40 at times...

For capturing song writing and musical ideas I have found the phone to be pretty cool at doing this and you already own it. Just check out the recorder options with your phone. I have found it to sound remarkably good and you can just connect it to your computer and drag the file straight off it and into your DAW for further work etc..

But yes a proper stereo recorder is always a good thing to have. I would get that over an 8 track device as you can always just make stereo recordings of your band rehearsals. Although brutal in some ways that is the best way to see who is playing out of balance with the rest of the band! (guitars usually! LOL 

Here's another novel use for a pocket recorder: I borrowed one from a friend to record test tones in several different cars. I now have sonic signatures that help me audition mixes in those cars and not be misled by each one's acoustical anomalies.

I have the Zoom H1 (I bought the accessory pack with it) and have been very happy with it.  It is great for recording rehearsals, etc.

I tried to use it to capture both of my dogs barking at the same time which I was able to do (for a sample set to record as .wav) but ended up not using the sample because I discover that every time the dog barks my birds chirp.

If you are looking at the Zoom options the newer H2n is quite different and has many more features now than the H4n. It has 4 built in mics and can do full surround recordings ie it can record front and rear at the same time. Something the H4n cannot do. That is basically a stereo device only.

I so wish I had had one of these back in 90's. I interviewed my drum instructor at the time (Joe Morello) on a Radio Shack micro cassette recorder (which at the time cost as much as the H1 did last year) ... the noise was horrendous.
I'll post the recording one of these days.