Portable recording devices

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leavings

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Anyone know what I could take on the road with me for recording? I'd like to capture a lot of the live shows on this year's tour. In the past I have run a line from the PA via RCA cords to a 4-track or 8-track, but I don't want to lug all of that around the country.

I've heard portable mini-disc players do a decent job (because they're so efficient in size and capacity). I'm wondering, though, if I should try to find something that has XLR inputs so that I don't have to push everything through a 1/8" jack. Multiple inputs would be a nice feature too. Does anyone know of such equipment?

Peter
 
BLARING SIREN, BLARING SIREN
HIGH PRICE ALERT, BANKRUPTCY IMMINENT

Anyone know of something a little less pricey, on the order of a portable mini-disc player (at worst $500)?
 
I like the vs 1680 made by Roland. You may be able to find one just under $500 on eBay.

Corey
 
I recomend

...the fostex vf160. The unit is not enormous, about 16" in diameter and you can record up to 8 tracks simultaneously (16 in total). Approximately $800+ new or you can pick up second hand ones now. You can take a direct line out of the PA mixer and still have 6 tracks for mics around the stage for ambience/crowd noise etc or other instruments.

We also used a minidisk recorder which works fine most of the time, but for some reason has a habbit of 'skipping' occasionaly thus rouining and otherwise great recording! We think it might be due to the use of compression on the reorder to fit more onto each disk, so be sure to leave that turned off!!
 
NAWWW...

y'all are totally off.

what you need is a hard drive based portable mp3 player with firewire/usb and an audio input. they are out there for like $300.

first of all, throw as big of a drive in it as you can... second of all instead of bringing the book of CDs to play in the van, you just bring this player. no more stolen/lost CDs. no more putting in more CDs. just put the thing on shuffle and leave it.

third of all, you can use it to record your band at night.

forth of all, when you stay with a nice person with a computer, you can dump your tracks to CD and erase the old stuff.

it is perfect! perfect i tell you! check out the iRivers...
 
I use a JVC minidisc recorder. It's about 3 inches square and 3/4 inch thick. Nice and portable. Connect it to the Tape Out jacks on the board using an adapter cable (2 RCA to 1/8" stereo mini plug) that you can find almost anywhere!

Make sure you use manual record level settings, and leave the levels low enough to account for any large peaks in the signal. Nice thing about minidisc is that there is virtually no noise, so the levels can be low and still sound good.

Works great for me! The rest of the band is always astounded by how great the recordings come out.
 
yea, but can it ALSO carry enough music to last quite a few van rides.... NO. can it dump the music to a universal format. NO.

with an MP3 player you could set up an FTP site, and if you stay at someones house with a high speed connection dump all your files to the site... another advantage....
 
Why are some good MiniDisk players for the money?

What would be a good mic or stereo mic to record straight to the MD if you where unable to tap into the tape outs?
 
It would be very unusual not to be able to tap straight out of the mixing desk. Even if there are no phono outs, there should be other outputs you could connect the minidisk player up to. That's assuming the band you're trying to record will let you near the mixing desk!

Just a matter of sussing out the outputs from the mixer in advance and getting the right cables.

The MP3 player idea sounds good, but is the MP3 quality as good as minidisk quality?
 
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