Has anyone used something like this for recording video? It's basically kind of like an ipod, but records audio at CD quality through a standard mini-jack. 20Gigs would hold quite a bit of CD quality audio. Overall it seems like a much better low-budget audio solution than a MiniDisc... it just records digital data and all you need to do to capture the audio is just hook it up to your computer via the USB 2.0 connection. Theoretically, easy as pie.

http://www.archos.com/lang=en//products/prw_500277.html

Anyone use this thing, or anything like it?

It shure looks nice! And with analog in. You can get a nice mixer and mics and you're all set! I gues...

Not that cheap, though...]

I would love to find this with a few XLR or 1/4" inputs, and a 3 channel mixer built in. I like the fact it's small and powered by batteries or house power. Not sure about the mp3 format though...

Whell, it goes to 160 (Real-Time Encoding ) kbps while most of the downloadable music is at 128kbps. So it should be good enough...

Well, I'm sure if it had a built in mixer and xlr jacks, they'd be recognizing it as a videography tool, meaning that would up the price by $1000 or something equally horrendous.

From a marketing standpoint, it's just supposed to be a jukebox. But if I can hook up my Studio1 XLR adapter to it's minijack and record audio right into computer-ready digital format, well, it might be quite a product for the low-budget filmmaker.

BTW, I've seen it on ebay, brand new, for under $200, which would make it cheaper than a minidisc recorder...

I'm just hoping to find someone on this board that might have used it or something like it, to see if I should even bother giving it a shot...

Imran.

Many of the Mp3 players with HD's are not meant for continuous duty. Meaning the hard drive is not ventilated for the drive to run continuously for long periods of time. Heat buildup causes premature drive failure. They work by spinning up the drive and filling up large memory buffers. Then they sit idle for 3 or 4 songs before they spin up again. The battery life would be extremely short with continuous drive use also.

There are a lot of hard disk recorders for audio available. With a 4-channel mixer, they start at around $500 or so and go up. Rapidly up.

Sweetwater or Musician's Friend have them on their web sites.

I wouldn't spend couple of hundred bucks to buy MD recorder. I would spend that money to upgrade either mics or preamp to get better sound. just thought.