Looks interesting....
http://www.edirol.net/products/en/R-09/

On the plus side:
- it does 24-bit, 48,000
- price looks right
- very portable
- does MP3 or uncompressed

On the down side:
- no XLR
- no phantom power
- no S/PDIF

Take a look at the new Sony PCM-D1 for a great piece of kit.

At $1850, the Sony had better be very, very good.

not everyone has deep enough pockets for the sony...

The R-9 is comparable to the M-Audio Microtrack:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MicroTrack-main.html

One advantage of the R-9 is that it takes AA batteries, where as the Microtrack does not. So you can keep a few rechargables on hand for longer trips.

Now I just want to see some tests on the R-9 sound quality...

On a minidisc forum some guy said that an Edirol rep told
him that the R09 will do 48V phantom.

I wonder how it could possibly do 48V Phantom when it seems to only have 1/8" miniplug inputs? I thought you would need XLR.

EDIT: The specs on the Edirol site say "plug-in power," which makes sense with miniplugs. I wonder if there's a way to convert prosumer "plug-in power" to professional 48V phantom?

I wonder how it could possibly do 48V Phantom when it seems to only have 1/8" miniplug inputs? I thought you would need XLR.

EDIT: The specs on the Edirol site say "plug-in power," which makes sense with miniplugs. I wonder if there's a way to convert prosumer "plug-in power" to professional 48V phantom?

I think the Edirol also has 1/4" in. The 1/4" in is how the MicroTrack
does the phantom. I had thought you'd need XLR but someone
told me that 1/4" can do it also, with a 1/4" to XLR adapter.
Maybe Edirol is holding off on announcing the phantom so they
don't run into the trouble MicroTrack did, where they originally
said/implied it would be 48V but then it was only 30V.
I do know that 2 AA batteries, such as the Edirol will use,
can provide 48V for 4-6 hours. I think this might have been
the problem with MictroTrack, that their built-in battery
wouldn't run very long at 48V. But with AAs you can always
replace ... or do what I do and use lithiums, for twice the
run time.

P.S. I saw a picture of the Edirol with a 1/4" plugged into it
at a long side of the device, at about the mid point. If it doesn't
do phantom at all, I'd be disinclined to get it.

I'm seeing no one advertise phantom power so I'm
really starting to wonder. Suppose it's the same as
the R-1, having no phantom. I heard the reps were
talking phantom at NAMM but maybe they were
confused about plug-in 3V for electret mikes.
Guess I won't be getting it.

Here is an interesting digital sound recorder option. It's a professional digital recording microphone. Combining a high-quality, Sennheiser omni-directional condenser capsule with an built in broadcast-quality Flash recorder. I was thinking of using this in location environments that were wireless microphone unfriendly.

http://www.audiomidi.com/FlashMic-P7497.aspx

Incredible! What will they think of next?