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On Mon, 26 Sep 2005, Nipper wrote: > The Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University is > considering updating our portable recorders. These machines will be used by > staff and students to conduct interviews and gather oral history in the > field. Quality, cost, ruggedness, reliability and storage capacity is > always a consideration but we'd like to get something that is also both user > friendly and allows easy manipulation and transfer of data to a PC. > > Mini Disc is high on the list at present but the pocket "memory card" type > voice recorder has also been suggested. > > Anyone care to weigh in with an opinion on either of these or possibly other > alternatives? My wife's son works at a Roland Dealer, so I would be in trouble if I didn't mention the Roland CD-2...but that is really when you want to hand someone a CD...especially good for teaching applications, but will also record to a compact flash card. $695 but you can usually "call" for a cheaper price. While I don't know your requirements, you can get 36 hours of mono, no moving parts, record about 90 minutes of WAV at 44.1 or 48, built-in mics and fits in your hand...Marantz PMD660- $500, four hours of recording on 4 AA batteries...compact flash recorder Minidisc...adds time to the process, plus I have had bad experiences with the format... As for the alternative...why transfer to a PC, when you can record on a PC-a laptop. As for the learning curve... It took me about 2 hours to teach a 70 year old how to record student performances (great sound quality was not a major concern) with Protools running on a laptop...while she is a smart lady...if a 70 year old with, minimal computer experience...ok, she is also pretty good with photoshop...can do it, I would assume it wouldn't take your staff very long to learn, plus, I would assume most staff could find other uses for the laptop. Karl