I'm trying to figure out what to buy.

I'm trying to replace an old casette recorder that my wife uses. That thing is like 20 years old. It's small, fits in a large pocket.

Whatever, it has to have the ability to record live, via microphone. She preaches & is also leader of a choir & gets herself involved with just about everything at church. We also visit other churches for their choir anniversaries a whole lot. So, recording live events is absolutely required.

She has to aquire songs from the internet and live radio. That's mainly for teaching new songs to the choir. I'm thinking it would be nice to burn CD's & pass them out to the choir members for them to learn the songs on their own time, since everybody by now has a CD player & most can read CD-R's.

I already bought an iRiver iFP-380T , which is an extremely portable MP3 recordable device, with a mic input. I didn't open the blister pac yet...so it's still returnable.

I'm trying to find an MD recorder that will outperform that iRiver, since the music is saved on the mini disc and therefore can be saved, without the upload/download thing.

The current MD recorders that have mic inputs are causing me some concern about transfering live recordings to the computer. They all seem to be "Net MD" and they will only let you transfer realtime, so a 2 hour recording takes 2 hours to transfer to PC. Scratch that! I might as well stick with cassette tapes & save the $$$... at least until Sony fixes their error of their ways.

Sony has models MZ-NF810CK & MZ-N10, right?

Scott doesn't sell to USA anymore. No warranty even if I bought thru minidisco or some other source.

So, I'm left with 2 Sonys to choose from? Both have crappy downloading of live recordings?

Daddup wit dat ?!?

Keep the iRiver?

You might be hard pressed to find another alternative (sorry). I've got a Samsung MP3 player/recorder as well as a Sharp MD player/recorder but only the MP3 has a built-in mic. I can't speak of the newer Net-MD's but I can tell you it was a pain having to take a music source (computer, amp, etc.) and record in through the Line-in on my MD to put something on disc. Just like you said, it had to be done in real-time. Ultimately to distribute it to the other members, it'd take having to make the recording digital regardless of actual recording method. See if Epinions has a review on the recording capabilities/quality and if it would be a feasible solution. If that turns out to be the case, then it'd just be a matter of a microphone for the MP3 and then writing the MP3s as CD audio tracks for a normal music CD.

If this just muddied the water - sorry. :) I know it can be frustrating (for our tapes we just did a double casette deck dub and handed 'em out). At least once your original is MP3'd, it should make it pretty quick.

I think you'd probably better off getting an mp3 player that records like RipFlash TRIO MP3 Player/Recorder. Then use the computer to either distribute the mp3 or burn them to CD audio.

How important is audio quality in your live recordings? If it is important you might want to get something that can record in an uncompressed format, such as wav. I use a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3 for live recording. You will need a preamp along with your mike to get really good recordings (or patch from the church PA amp). If a compressed format will do for you, any of the MD or MP3 recorders will do.

Hey, thanks guys! I take 1 thing for sure so far - MD units aren't where they need to be - yet.

I've been digging into HD (Jukebox) types the last couple of days, kind of getting my feet wet in that product group. iPod, Nomad like bob has, and once again, iRiver caught my eye with their ihp-120 unit.

However, I'm not all that impressed with anything, really, and I want to give the MD market some time to develop. I also want some time for my wife (and I) to start using mp3's instead of cassettes & see if we're able to make it work, and how we like it and what we really would like to have.

I am thinking the iRiver iFP-380T that I already have is a good get-your-feet-wet tool and will give us some experience and time to let this stuff get even better (which I have NO doubt that it will by leaps & bounds). I don't think that this unit will fall into total disuse for a long time, even if it's replaced with some gee-whiz unit for the primary missions. I got about $145 into it, so, no biggie anyway.

If anyone is interested in going HD jukebox though, check out that iRiver ihp-120 unit. I sure did come close to buying one yesterday @ eCOST.com

Thanks again!

btw, that RipFlash TRIO is nice too, but I think my iRiver got it beat, just a tad...