Advice on buying an mp3 player/recorder

[turbcharbo]

Hey guys,

I'm in the market to buy some sort of digital jukebox. I'm going to need it mostly for school. I'm a musician and need some sort of hd based device that will enable me to record high quality lossless audio (with the addition of a quality external mic/preamp) but that will also be functional as a portable audio player. Also, it would be awesome if that same player had a function to record and encode lps, cds or even tapes in playable digital audio format. I'm basically looking for something that will be able to:

1. play mp3s (and different formats like wav, wma etc)
2. store regular data (like text files, videos, pictures)
3. has a voice recorder
4. has an optical in/out for plugging in a quality mic or recording directly from an analog source like vinyl or cd

It seems as if the iriver ihp 120 is the only player that does all of this. I'm surprised that no new companies have come out with something similar.

So, what do you guys think I should get?

 

[Jimbo3b]

Optical in/out pretty much dooms your search.

How much space do you need? You can open up your search to flash-based players if you get one that accepts SD cards, or if you don't need to carry around all your stuff all the time.

I like my Cowon D2 for music and video. It works OK for pictures, but it's a little clunky. It has a notepad that I don't use. The voice recorder works really well for me even without an external microphone; I record meetings at work.

I'm not familiar with the whole market, but I don't think you'll want to use a portable player to convert LPs or tapes. The line in on my Cowon D2 records up to 256 kbps. Therefore it will work to record a class, catch a jam session or making a practice recording. For high quality digital-to-audio conversions check out the soundcards discussed on the computers-as-source forum.

For ripping CDs you should stay digital all the way. Search on and try out EAC (Exact Audio Copy).

Good luck!

 

[howl]

in terms of recording nothing can beat a mini disc player, but it doesn't follow your guidelines