Tong Family

PORTABLE PODCASTING RECORDING EQUIPMENT RECOMMENDATIONS | The Sound Professionals, Inc.. I’ve been getting things from Sound Professionals. They are great. Now they are pre bundling equipment for podcasting which is great.
Unlike trying to mate an iRiver iFP-799 with a microphone, these are more dedicated devices. I actually think while more expensive these will ergonomically work better. For instance the “Edirol R-1”:http://edirol.com/products/info/r1.html recorder is way bigger but has controls that actually make snese. It records directly into MP3 as well. Unlike the el cheapo products, it looks well made. It records into a compact flash. Expensive for sure, but interesting if you are serious.
They also have other accessories including a “Level Meter”:http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/ISI-RLM-1 for the iRiver. Remarkably when you are recording with the iRiver, you have no idea what the sound levels are. $99 so expensive and less portable.
They also stock the “iRiver iFP-799”:http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/IRIVER-IFP-799 which you can get for $180 at low cost places or $229 from them. I’ve found this thing only OK. It does record, but the user interface is terrible and battery life isn’t good (it uses a AA battery). Also, because you can’t see levels not can I find a way to change levels during recording, it works just OK in real life. What you want is a level meter and the ability to adjust gain or have some sort of automatic gain control. It probably is in the product, but I can’t find it in the documentation.
Another more expensive option is the iRiver “H320”:http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/IRIVER-H320. This is a 20GB hard disk device, but it also does MP3 recording too. I haven’t tried it to see how the user interface is.