I belong to an underserved minority when it comes to audio and video gear. The middle ground between consumer level ( much as I hate the term any camera where you can't select the aperture or a sound recorder that believes it knows what level of gain you want are  * L O's   e.g  Camera like object,  Recorder like object. Their purpose is  to be moved from shelf to birthday party to cupboard under the stairs.

The same division is also true of portable digital recorders. One of the issues that bugs me with podcasts is the majority of shows that are poorly produced variants of the current media. I'm trying to find a middle ground that takes NPR's inherent smugness yet still ahderes to  conventions  of constructing a narrative with  attention to how sound is used both as a character in telling the story while obviously being the medium in which it's carried.   Transom.org is a pretty good resource for people looking  for good advice on creating public radio type programming though please think more BBC than Npr  

My mobile recorder , a Sony  DAT , essentially a jumped up video recorder dedicated to sound, Cd quality and temperamental, heavy  and eats batteries. It's pretty dead as a consumer format, hell it was still born with an incredibly poor DRM scheme which often prevented you from using your own material on other decks.. Yes the RIAA have always been a  little  nuts.   Still buying twenty year old pro gear sounds better than consumer level now gear in many cases ( it's not as true with video )

Many podcasters use Irivers , a flash memory based  mp3 player recorder  due to their mic input, relative cheapness and  that there's not a huge choice available. Sure most players now have a record feature but it's invariably  one control, on/ off and sound like,well if you've listened to many mobile podcasts you know that they sound like ass.  No I'm not being crude  it's sounds like the mike has been shoved  up an ass. In short an afterthought feature using  a bucks worth of components.

 . You get to 350 -500 and you can have a Marantz , M Audio or edirol recorder.I've not used them all but there's  not a huge difference between them and will all do a "good enough" job.  Sure they don't all have xlr connectors, long memory, controls that are easily accessible but it's $400 for a reason.  I thought Tascam did a good job at just under the grand with this guy which covers just about anything I'd need  ( though it doesn't come with a placate wife card)




This is not a prop it's Sony's PCM d1  digital recorder. 4g 24Bit/  96Khz recording with some rather nice "life" saving features.  It better have a defibrillator feature because the price tag.. $2000  may have you clutching your chest. Love the design, looks partially like an old Sony Pro7 ( scanner/ reciever)  of the lifesaver is the way in which it records the main sound  and a "shadow track" at 20db down.  So if your main track peaks , starts clipping, then the recorder will take the -20 db down track and normalise the main one  for a happy distortion free life.  Least that's how I read it  Now can I please find a way to get one of these to review