http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html
Edirol R-1 - just read about it on a forum. Seems to be very interesting, just the thing that I had been waiting for. According to this website, it can make high-quality recordings in mp3-format. What do you think - will this be the sessioneer’s favourite gadget?
these thing always keep on improving, but it sure looks handy enough, worth a chance,
but you might have to pay 25% income tax in Lucilinburhuc when you import from outside europe.
maybe it’s best to wait 'till they sell it in germany.
It looks pretty limited from a session perspective – it costs a lot ($440 street, $550 list) and can only record two hours (at 64 kb MP3) without swapping memory, if I read it correctly. (Maybe for more money you can get more memory?) And the high quality recording is going to be wasted on a session, anyway.
Looks to me like this is targeted at professional recording projects – it’s got that typical high quality, high price, limited duration profile.
it sure is 2 hours of 24-bit/44.1kHz WAV recording,
http://www.synthtopia.com/news/04_09/Edirol_MP3_Recorder.html
So two hours on a 64Mb means 8hrs on a 256Mb.
It also does 1hr with NO COMPRESSION on a 1Gb.
Probably a good medium would be a 256Mb compactflash card ($45) used at 128mb compression (CD quality) giving you 4hrs recording time. Its only the $440 street price thats a problem!)
Paul
It’s beginning to look good. I’m still waiting for a $200 device with swapable hard drives, WAV recording and a good interface. Throw in a little qwerty keyboard and i’ll buy it!
Then again, a Sharp minidisc is just about perfect 
for this application and costs half as much.
And a decent cassette recorder will do everthing you want except for computer editing. So you play the tape into the computer while you’re washing dishes. Big deal.
No reason why it shouldn’t include an 8-megapixel CCD and a 4x zoom lens, eh?
There are always trade offs. Price, portability, sound quality, capacity, size of files, ease of use, ability to export files are some of the items on my list. A mic can help with sound quality, and also add to the cost.
For my needs the sweet spot was a Sony voice recorder. I read an excellent write up by Michael Eskin and bought one.
Scorecard:
portability A+ (tiny–fits in shirt pocket with mic!)
price B ($80 refurb, newer model retails for $150)
capacity B (two hours at medium resolution, newer unit does 4 hours)
sound quality B (using external mic)
interface B (USB to transfer files–a must have for my needs)
Portability is at the top of my list. I carry my Sony virtually everywhere and I can record unobtrusively where a bigger unit will stick out. Most people that see the Sony think it is a cell phone. The Sony records in DVF format, with a conversion to WAV (and then another utility to MP3). Sound quality approximates AM radio.
I’m still loving my iRiver iHP-120 after 2 - 3 months of ownership.
Same here. Biggest problem is I’m recording more stuff than I have time to listen to…
Same problem - 94 cds on it so far - but I’'m playing it nearly 8 hours a day at work. I’d really been feeling bad about not listening as intensely as I used to and the device has certainly remedied that problem. It did a fine job of recording sessions and workshop at the North Hero Pipers Gathering.
I was wondering if anyone had those…
So what are the pros and cons of the iRiver?
What are you anyhow, some kind of photographer? 
I’m sticking to Sharp minidisc for now, BTW. It’s like a cassette recorder for nerds.
Pros:
–Small and light
–Can record 2+ hours straight (up to 5 hours if you’re willing to reduce sound quality a lot, about 1 hour at WAV format)
–20 GB hard drive means it can hold tons of music – mine has got 11 days of music festival, several sessions, and 10-20 albums, and I’ve only used up about half the available space
–when plugged into computer, is an external hard drive (which has saved my bacon doing real work once)
–as a result, downloading music and reorganizing the files on it is easy (if you’ve got a computer handy)
–nice sound quality
–as a bonus can be used as a portable MP3 player
Cons:
–occasional tiny audio dropouts means recordings will not be pristine (fine for sessions and audience recordings, not so fine for directly dumping albums to iRiver or professional recording)
–built-in rechargable battery means you need to occasionally return to a power outlet. (Looks like you can do maybe six hours of recording without recharging – exact length will depend on MP3 recording quality)
–files cannot be easily organized without a computer handy. Until you use a computer to do something with them, recordings are just stored voice001, voice002, voice003, etc, without even a useful time stamp.
–user interface is a bit awkward
–recording level controls are very awkward, the recording level is not metered, and the level cannot be adjusted on the fly
–internal mic not terribly good (but small external mic included is fine)
–recording takes time to start – at best a couple of seconds, at worst maybe 15 seconds (if you have to boot the machine from scratch)
In practice, I ended up working out the following schedule for using it at Goderich: 1) Record a day’s worth of classes. 2) Recharge during the 2-3 hours off at dinner time. 3) Record the evening’s concerts and maybe a session. 4) Recharge while sleeping. 5) In the morning, hook it up to my laptop, move the previous day’s recordings to a directory indicting the date they were made, and copy them to the laptop. This worked very well for me.
I just started out taping live music, and have been learning a lot about it over the last few months. I’m not sure the quality of recordings this thing will produce, but for $500 (somebody mentioned this was the price) you can get a VERY NICE recording setup that will produce awesome recordings. You can actually get them for a lot less as well, but if you are considering spending $500 on recording equipment, you can probobly do much better than this small handheld device.
$140 for the mics,
$200 for a nice MD player
$60 for the optional battery box (useful if you want to tape louder rock shows and such)
a few extra dollars for small mic stand, cables, blank media
certainly less than $500 and can produce excellent recordings. I’m pretty new to the whole taping thing, but this is just my 0.02!
Cheers!
Brendan
I’ve started ripping all my CDs down to MP3s so I’ve experimented a lot with A/B listening tests of different encoders to see how low I could go without sacrificing quality.
No MP3 compression is truly “cd quality” because the MP3 format is by nature lossy. 128k compression is nowhere near CD quality. 128k compression is the bare minimum for decent musical quality - and there will often be clearly audible artifacts especially with flute/whistle music. Some music is just tolerable at 128k but some is horrible. You need to go to 192k or better to consistently get results that aren’t outright annoying. I’ve found that the best overall solution is running 320k VBR - which will give you a result that only the most golden-eared will be able to tell from a CD at file sizes that, depending on the material, may be as small as about twice the size of a 128k fixed rate file.
I’ll join in with the minidisc crowd.
The thing I like best about MD is that I can record from ANY source. I can hook up a set of soundproffesional binaural mics (very cool mics) and record live. I can use the digital line in to copy anything from my home stereo. I can use the 3mm plug line in to copy from any other stereo or a computer with no optical out on the soundcard. I can turn around and dump those files (real time) onto my PC and burn a CD.
I can do fun things with the binaurals like wear them (they actually fit snugly in your ear) while playing a band gig so my daughter can have an answer to “what does it sound like up there when you play with the other guys?”
When I travel I can wear those mics fairly stealthily and just walk around taking audio “snapshots”. My kids really like that as well.
It is a really fun piece of tech that I have used almost every day since I bought it three years ago. It’s easy to use, cheap and pretty tough.
Mark V.
The iRiver is supposed to be able to record optical in or line in, in addition to the mics. (I’ve not tried anything other than the mics.)
And when you want to transfer to the computer, you just use the USB cable and copy the files over. A day’s worth of recording takes a few minutes (and virtually no work on your part) to transfer, and the recording never leaves the digital domain in the process.
The problem with these newfangled devices is that they make it so easy to record stuff, dump it onto your computer, and create CDs that before you know it you’ve got 2,000 hours of music to listen to but only 2 or 3 hours of quality listening time available in a typical day (and that’s if you’re really lucky).
I use my minidisc recorder only about 3 or 4 times a year now, limiting it to times when I know I’ll be at a session with players who are likely to have great tunes that I want to learn, or to record a concert or workshop by one of my very favorite musicians. Otherwise I just leave it at home. I feel like I haven’t taken enough time to really get to know the recordings I already have, and there’s enough good music on those recordings to keep me listening and learning for a lifetime.
My philosophy with music is that I’d rather have fewer tunes in my repertoire, and know them really well, than to have thousands of tunes that I can only play in a “session-worthy” fashion. You have to spend time living with a tune in order to know it well enough to do it justice. Same goes for recordings: the more you listen to a recording of a great musician, the more you get out of it. I’d rather spend my time listening closely to a few good recordings than to half-listen to thousands of hours of stuff.