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At 09:15 AM 2010-03-18, Jones, Randye wrote: >Good morning. > >I'm looking for a small digital recorder that will a good job of >capturing the singing voice. Most I've seen are more suited to >recording speech. Any suggestions? BTW, price *is* an object. Hi, Randye, The price-performance continuum presents difficult choices because adequate performance for one person may be inadequate for another. The digital "voice" recorders fall off the curve and into the "bit bucket" as far as I'm concerned. You really want an "audio" recorder, not a "voice" recorder. I think the lowest price recorder on the market--at least the one that I have used--is the Zoom H2 and, for the price, it's amazing. I think it's around $140 in the US these days. My other digital recording system is a pair of DPA 4006TL mics and Sound Devices 722 recorder. The DPAs/SD blow away the Zoom, but they should as the price difference is around 50x. http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h2/index.php http://www.amazon.com/Zoom-H2-Portable-Stereo-Recorder/dp/B000VBH2IG for reference: http://www.dpamicrophones.com/en/products.aspx?c=Item&category=186&item=24002 http://www.dpamicrophones.com/en/products.aspx?c=Item&category=188&item=24010 http://www.sounddevices.com/products/722.htm There is an interesting series of blog posts here: http://www.theatreofnoise.com/2009/11/summary-of-portable-digital-audio.html http://www.theatreofnoise.com/2009/11/which-portable-digital-audio-recorder.html http://www.theatreofnoise.com/2009/11/choosing-audio-recorder-for-ultimate.html I would only purchase ONE of any of the recorders straight away so you can be sure it meets your needs. The Zoom H2 met my needs for several applications and one of the needs was lowest cost acceptable option, but as they say, your mileage may vary. How you plan on operating may influence your choice. One of the things I like about the H2 is that it is a true four-channel recorder with four directional mics under the grille which provides me with lots of options for oral histories and other applications. It does surprisingly well for the price on music. I have successfully intermixed Zoom recordings with those from my high-end rig and they did NOT stand out like sore thumbs. One other question you did not ask: How are you going to store the files. I record at 44.1 ks/s, 24 bits on the Zoom H2s most of the time. That's about 1 GB per hour. Depending on where you are going with this, you might want to use 48 ks/s which will produce a slightly larger file. You probably should use 24 bits and set levels conservatively. Recording to MP3s is an option for saving storage space, but at a loss of quality. Good luck -- please let us know how you slice this pie. Cheers, Richard Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask] Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.