Small portable MP3 recorder

[Muse]

A friend of mine wants to get an MP3 recorder, wants to know what to get. I told him my iRiver iHP-120 isn't made any longer, but he can maybe pick up one used or the iHP-140 (H120 & H140). Minimal characteristics would be ability to record quality MP3s from line-in and not be too big. Would probably need to run on battery power, although AC is probably available where he'll use it. It would just be one more thing to do to have to plug it in, though. What's available that would work for this these days? Or is he better off scouring eBay for used iRiver H1xx's?

 

[Thump553]

What is primarily going to use it for-recording concerts or lectures?

 

[Muse]

What is primarily going to use it for-recording concerts or lectures?

We're both DJs at a college radio station. His primary use at least at first will be to record his show in real time off the line-out from the air studio mixing board. I used to do this to WAV using my iRiver and did post processing using the LAME MP3 encoder to produce MP3s using 128 kbps 44 khz sampling rate. However, I decided I probably couldn't tell the difference between those and MP3s made using the same parameters with the iRiver to record MP3s directly. The iRiver doesn't use the LAME encoder, but I doubt I could tell the difference and figure it's not worth the extra hassle. The shows we record are continuous 2.5-3 hours mostly music played from either CD players or studio quality turntables, quality microphones.