Anyone try live performance recording with iHP-120?

External mic eh-- the iHP-100 doesn't have a mic jack. Does the 120 have a mic jack, then? Recording with the built in mic on the iHP-100 is pretty mediocre compared to using an external mic on an MD recorder. Damn, wish I'd waited a couple months for the 120

An external mic can be hooked up to the optical in/out

Note that the line-in is both optical and analog.

You can adjust the recording level for the EXTERNAL mike input. You cannot adjust the record level for the LINE-IN/OPTICAL-in input. There is no vu meter, but you can monitor the recording for high level clipping.

The external mike jack is the same jack as the LINE/OPTICAL-in jack. When you select EXT MIKE, the jack provides plug-in power for your microphone and a mike pre-amp. The EXT MIKE input does not seem like a LINE-IN boosted to accept a microphone. The Nomad Jukebox 3 has a feature where the LINE-IN is boosted by up to 49db. That results in very noticeable background noise in the recording. And the NJB3 does not provide plug-in power.

On the IHP-120, the level of pre-amp boost seems low. That should prevent the front-end overload from using binaural mikes at loud concerts. Sony MD recorders may have adjustable record level gain, but they can suffer from pre-amp overload even with low record level settings.

I tried some OPTICAL-in recordings (WAV, 128K MP3, 256K MP3) from a CD and found the recordings very satisfactory. BTW, WAV recording is very hard on battery life (two to three hours). And there is a limit of 75 minutes per WAV file. The MP3 limit and battery life is higher. There is virtually no background noise on the LINE/OPTICAL-in, so if you use a high quality mike and pre-amp, you can make publishable music.

The EXT mike input has a small amount of background noise (no mike actually attached). It is slightly higher than the background noise of a Sony MD recorder mike input. With a strong input (binary mikes / loud concert), you cannot hear the background noise.

FYI, whenever the IHP-120 is in record standby, the hard drive is spinning and gulping battery power. So at the end of a 75 minute WAV recording, the IHP-120 automatically saves the recording and goes into standby, again gulping battery power.

BTW, I tried a Sound Professional battery box and binaural mike on the EXT MIC input and got a a record volume level almost as high as the internal mic. It was quite satisfactory.

It appears to me that the drive spin down issue is a firmware bug. If you turn on the IHP-120 and do not play a song, the drive will keep spinning until the IHP-120 turns itself off. This bug is not a biggy, but it does cost some battery power.

is the Ext. Mike option only available if there is an external mic plugged in? Otherwise I take it that this is new to the iHP-120 as my iHP-100 does not seem to have an "External Mic" option in the record menu, just mic.

The IHP-120 displays the current input source on the standby screen. The available choices are INT mic, EXT mic, Optical, Line. You can select EXT mic even if there is no mic plugged into the line-in jack. In this case, you could hear at max volume a slight amount of background pre-amp noise.

BTW, it would seem prudent when using line level sources to set the input source to line-in/optical-in before connecting the line level source cable. I wonder how the EXT mic pre-amp is protected if a line level source is connected and the EXT mic happens to be the selected input.