There are lot of small digital audio recorders, but only the sizes are small--their price tags are rather over-enthusiastic. Then I read this review of the Zoom H2, and that's what I bought. It's cute, it comes with all the accessories you need, including an microphone-stand adapter and surprisingly-good earbuds, and the sound quality is excellent. This little gadget comes with four built-in microphones: two front and two rear. The front mics cover a 90° spread, and the rear mics 120°. So you can record front or rear two-channel stereo, or four-channel surround. It records either WAV format or MP3, and uses up to a 2GB SD card for storage, or a 4GB SDHC card. For $180 I am happy.

It's easy to use--push a button to turn on the microphones, set your recording levels, then push a button to start recording. No hassles with tapes or external mics--just push buttons and go. The Zoom's default file format is 44.1kHz/16-bit WAV, which is a standard high-quality setting. A 1-GB storage card holds about 90 minutes of two-channel music on this setting. If you want to cram in hours and hours, use MP3. My first gig was recording the Christmas show of the Upriver Country band at the local Grange hall. (We country folks know how to party. Pot luck dinner and dancing!)

It doesn't matter what type of recorder you use; they all operate in a similar fashion, and editing sound files is the same no matter where they came from.

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