I'm a big fan of the minidisc recorder for digital recording of horn practice and performance among other things. Excellent sound and either 80 or 160 minutes of very high or nearly very high quality digital sound - at maybe $1.50 per reusable disc in 10-packs. All Sony's models with numbers starting 700 and up appear to have Mic inputs. 610, 510, 410 do not. I have an MZ-N10 bought new off of ebay for about $200 which has mic input. There's an N10 BuyNow there now for $167. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=15056&item=5717186885&rd=1 I seriously considered the Sharp DR420 which has both automatic level control and manual adjustable-while-recording mic volume. I've found the Sony's auto level control works fine for me. But....the recorder just makes sure the signal going in gets recorded nicely. The mic input provides power to small condenser mics, so the sound quality will automatically be better than with boom boxes and other cassette recorders that don't provide "phantom power." The key to good recording is the microphone - and I don't have experience with what to buy commecially that's good. I get what I consider excellent results (agreed to by others) from a home-brew binaural setup made by soldering 2 $2 Radio Shack mic capsules to the wires on an old cassette player headphone. http://art.simon.tripod.com/stealth.html Sometimes I wear it when recording, sometimes I just let it lie on a chair and sometimes I let a styrofoam wig head wear it. The results are unbelievably good. Check out http://www.minidisc.org/sony_mzr97500_comparison.html for more info on Sony minidisc and minidisc in general. Only a few pricey old MDR's and some of the newest Sonys let you transfer digitally to your computer - to prevent piracy. For most it's analogue from the MDR into your sound card. I do this all the time and it's a bit of a pain, but far better in terms of quality/$ ratio than anything else I've found. Jim Wright
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