[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Hip Priest

Good questions. Spoken word, from live and maybe in front of a shortwave radio speaker, plus nature sounds. There's unlikely to be music involved.

hm. voice does not require very high quality. shortwave radio doesn't either. i would not be too concerned with an expensive device. as a matter of fact, most mp3 recorders do 320kbps which is quite high, lossy yes, but not a big issue. i do interviews with my iriver flash player & it's very simple.

however, if you want some kind of quality for other people to listen to (not just "voice notes"), you'll want to do better. in that case what matters the most will not be the recorder itself but the microphone.

for indoor recording, talking front of your radio, however, i'm not sure you need a portable recorder. you could record directly into the PC

maybe a blue "snowball" microphone which you can plug directly into the usb port of your mac or pc? as long as it's relatively a quiet machine, it should cause no problems. all you need to do is download audacity (which is free) and you're in business. goes for about $100, not sure about prices in the u.k. looks cool too! i want one. yes i do.

for nature sounds, say, if you're going to be recording birdsongs, then it's tricker, you'll need a quality shotgun mic, a windscreen, and either a recorder with XLR inputs or an adapter from XLR to miniplug. you'll need a good pair of monitor heaphones too, to check that you're actually recording what you want and not a bunch of wind.... all of which is an expensive proposition, even if you get a chep recorder, but you can find some "value" solutions if you do your homework and hunt for bargains.

does this more or less answer??

to summarize again: the microphone's the thing.