which voice recorder to go with? please help

[versuviusx]

ever had a song in your head while you were driving in the car by your self. and you kept humming it and realized you loved it but couldn't record it because you weren't in the studio. so what you do is you try to use someone elses phone to leave the melody in your voice mail via cell phone. so i'm looking for a better solution just incase. looking for a digital voice recorder on the cheap with good quality playback. something small and good on batteries. suggestions welcomed.

[Smitty]

you can spend all kinds of money on this category of stuff, but if your goal is just to get an idea down, i'd keep an eye out for a used old handheld tape recorder... the micro tapes are kind of bullshit, but i have one that takes full size tapes and plays back decently. kind of like a tape walkman, but with a built in mic. somebody gave it to me, but i think they'd be pretty cheap used.

PLUS then you can mix your original idea recording into the final mix and impress the lo-fi enthusiasts!

[JES]

Agreed. Though OTOH, if you want to dump stuff directly into the computer, then a voice recorder might be the way to go. If you have an ipod, there's an attachment that turns it into a voice recorder, or you could pick up something like the Edirol, though that sounds like it's probably more than what you need (great for interviewing, though).

Whatever you do, avoid ones that use proprietary software or formats (SONY).

Best,
--JES

[ataraxia]

here's my recommendation (i did this recently myself). http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/cre ... prod.txt.1
it's an mp3 player that records voice, the quality is low and in mono, but it's very sufficient for me. It also has 4gb of memory and other features it was cheap enough to go with. that and i was the last dude in the world with out an mp3 player . haha

[SoulOfJonas]

here's what i use: http://www.onsale.com/shop/detail.aspx? ... =BWBNEXTAG

i got it for about $80 refurb and i love the thing. it's about the size of a cellphone so i always have it in my pocket for random ideas, cool sounds, what not. it's stereo which can be cool for the field recording type stuff or you can use it in mono. whenever i need, i just dump the files on to my mac via usb, convert the files from WMA to WAV using Peak LE and then do whatever i want with em.

i don't think it sounds "absolute amazing" but it works and I have sampled alot of stuff with it then broken it up in ReCycle and had a ball.

-JV

[SoulOfJonas]

and btw the battery life on my voice recorder -2 AAAs - is absurd. i've accidentally left it on for days, sometimes recording part of that time, and still not had to replace it batteries for another couple weeks.

-JV