you have to watch the compression on these, they offer a choice of quality levels and those with the most recording time are poor. The high quality recording setting cuts down the recording time accordingly. The only disadvanatge is really that your master is permanently compressed, so making a wave or cd out of it gains nothing in quality.

But they are very convenient, and remarkable for the size. Media is obviously more expensive than minidisk, but you get mixing, dsp, effects, drums, and with usb you do a few tracks then download to the pc, so do not need much media beyond one reasonably sized flash card.

Here's something noone else has mentioned: I use my Creative Labs NOMAD Jukebox mp3 player for recording my live gigs, and it works incredibly well. It can record WAV files and has a line input so I just feed it from my stage mixer. Then I take the file into my computer and edit with Sound Forge and voila! Instant demo. I offload the WAV files and convert them to mp3's and restore them back into the Nomad for convenience. The Nomad is very useful and makes a dandy MP3 player. Have recommended this to friends who are also very pleased with theirs. Go to http://www.nomadworld.com/

This looks very interesting indeed!
Does anyone know the differences between the 6 gig and the 10 gig models, other that storage capacity?
Thanks,
DonM

Nomad Jukebox looks very interesting. Does it find files files fast like a CD?
Eddie

There's an interactive demo on the website. It organizes and finds file at least as fast as CD.
Don

I've read that the recording quality is not as good as the playback in one of the reviews, and wonder how you monitor levels to avoid clipping when recording analogue? the specs are not at all clear on this. I was interested in getting one of these but need more info on the recording quality first.

I don't know how my Nomad Jukebox handles input levels but it must be an auto-leveling scheme... I can only tell you that it works very well and I have been highly impressed with the results. I didn't actually buy this to be anything more than an MP3 player, but I can testify that it makes a darn good portable recorder. I have used in in my home studio in place of a DAT machine for quick recordings, and again it worked great. The only thing is that the Nomad can only record about five minutes at a time before dumping it's RAM to the HD, but it does so seemlessly and then I use Sound Forge to restitch and edit the tracks. This isn't the end-all portable digital recorder but considering that it's a great MP3 player first and foremost, the record feature is just a great bonus.

As to the hard drive size, I have a reliable friend who swears there is just a notebook HD in these things and that he replaced his himself. I haven't needed to do this but I believe him.

BTW: Tascam has come out with a cool little pocket four track recorder/MP3 player with a built-in MIDI sound module called the Pocketstudio 5. Lists for $599. This may interest some of you:
http://www.tascam.com/products/pocketstudio/pocketstudio5/index.php

Thanks Esh,
I assume that as long as the song is less than five minutes long, everything would be fine and that the unit would automatically end the track and start another when the recording stops.
The web site says that it is a standard notebook-size hd, but that the software is configured so that a larger capacity hd can't be fitted.
DonM

thanks,
I think I'll wait, I don't like auto recording systems. Maybe the next model they will make the volume control an input level control and give a level bargraph on the display when recording? As you say it's more of a bonus feature than a proper recording solution.

If I'm reading correctly, you can set the record levels manually, at least on the latest model.
Don