The end of compact MiniDisc field recorders?
 

My prayers have been answered in the Edirol R-1 WAV/MP3 recorder.


http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html

The HHB and the Marantz are totally different animals. You must be refering to the consumer MD recorders.

What is the recommended retail price?

This may work well with the new Beach Tek DXA-10 line level 2 channel mixer. Pricing will be similar to the DXA-8. All youd need is a 1/8" stereo male to L and R RCA's

I never heard back from iRiver when I asked them about the suitability of using their devices as a field recorder. Their recorders are only 16-bit 44kHz and are really geared to be MP3 players. But it does open a possibility of new recorders. The iRivers come in flavors of 10, 20, and 30GB size!

I'm waiting for Nnovia to have their systems be audio-only. 80 gigs of super quality (cirrus 7) converters built in. Plus, balanced or unbalanced inputs. And it's 48K wav or aiff.

Fed Ex just brought me a Beach Tek DXA-10.

Same size as the other units but it doesn't attach to the camera. It comes with a belt clip and could be camera mounted using an accesory bracket.

The biggie wuith the DXA-10 is that it's made for the consumer mini disk , flash and hard drive recorders.

It has XLR inputs with separately switchable 48volt phantom and 2 stages of gain (30 and 60 db) The outputs are 2 RCA's at a max output of +18 db or a mic 1/8 stereo mini output at -37db.

With this setup you could feed a camera or other high level recorder using line input or a consumer camera or recorder at mic level through a simple 1/8" mini stereo cable.

This has most of the bases covered, it's light and it's inexpensive. it wouled also be a natural for the Edirol unit.

I will do some testing and expand on this info
for pictures look here