[linux-audio-user] Portable field recording set-up?

[Paul Davis]

On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 20:42 +0000, S. Massy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> For a project of mine, I would need a portable, affordable ($200-250)
> way to make quality stereo recordings of natural and/or urban
> environments. Here are the criteria I have defined so far:
> * sr should be at least 44.1khz
> * recording should be stereo
> * if compressed, prefer lossless compression, otherwise, good quality
>   encoding: minimum 160kbps
> * Should be reasonably portable (i.e compact and battery-operated) and
>   sturdy.
> 
> So far, the idea I came up with is to use one of those little Iriver
> flash players, or even one of their hd-based ones, if I can find one
> chap enough, with a stereo mic going into a little pre-amp, then going
> into the Iriver's line-in. Anybody has any comments on such a set-up?
> Any other idea comes to mind?
> 
> I heard that minidisc recorders do a very good job when used for field
> recordings, and that many already have inputs for a stereo mic, but,
> as far as I could tell, they interact very poorly with Linux, and they
> use a proprietary compression format. How accurate is this? Has
> anybody had a positive experience with a minidisc recorder and Linux? 

we just got an iAudio X5. its a disk-based system, not flash. rugged,
thought not "industrially" so, interacts perfectly with linux (USB mass
storage device, no special playlist s/w required). plays videos, WAV,
FLAC, ogg as well as the usual mp3/wma crowd. has line-in, though
through an "expander" connector.

--p