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So my folks and I have been kicking the idea around of getting my grandmothers to speak their memoirs. For that, I'm looking for something similar to the old style tape voice recorders.

I'm going to buy this machine on my own, so I'll get some other uses out of it.

In addition to that, I've been writing a little bit of music with one of my buds. I'd like this to double as sort of a sketch pad or whatever.

The advice that I'm getting IRL from music friends is to just get an I/O box and use my laptop and protools or something. I use my laptop everyday, so that's sort of off the table, as far as using it as a voice recorder is concerned.

Also, I have a ton of experience on Avid machines, and based on that, I'm almost 100% certain that I don't want to turn into a protools engineer. I see that as sort of inevitable, when/if I were to go that direction.

I've sort of got it narrowed down. Tascam DR-40 and Zoom H4N are the two models that I've trying to decide on.

I don't care if the machine doesn't work for tracking music. I'm not interested in running a fuckoff home studio. I swam in those waters years ago, I don't have the time right now. I do think that I really need multiple tracks though. Somewhere between 2 and 8. I only play the guitar, ukulele, harmonica and I'm going to be doing a lot of singing when we finally get some material ironed out.

Really what it boils down to is 4ish tracks, goodish built in microphones and super easy to use. That's my criteria.

Anybody have any advice/input/suggestions/jokes etc?

A used Alesis 8 track Adat machine?

PM Mickie. A guy that plays with him sometimes uses the zoom unit I think. You can find out from him what the recording quality is.

Thanks for the heads up!

As I'm sure tons of folks here can relate, the notion of getting together to write music with friends when you've got an adult life can be taxing. I'm hoping to stream line that process.

This stuff is really only a couple hundred bucks, and I don't normally put hours and hours of research into that, but I don't want to have a bunch of these things lying around either.

I currently use a marantz pmd222 cassette tape field recorder, and while it's slightly bulky and only records a single channel to tape I can't complain about it as it suits my needs. From what I know there are a few other models but I don't know if any of them are multiple tracks. The 420/430 models are stereo I think, and I haven't used them.

As for the digital field recorders, I bought a tascam dp-004 when they first came out. I used it for a few years before I went to tapes and I'm pretty sure I used the built in microphones. From what I remember, you could only record two tracks at once, there are two built in microphones on the unit and they were connected to the first and second tracks. You could change the order & usage with the digital interface and there are two 1/4" inputs but I don't recall if you could assign the external mics to tracks 3 or 4 and be able to record all tracks at once. I get that isn't really necessary but I would have liked that feature. I say this because while the dr-40 looks a lot more streamlined then the dp-004, the interface looks similar which makes me think some of the things I didn't like like about the larger model might be present. It's nice to see they added xlr inputs with the 1/4ths though.

A friend of mine uses the Zoom for recording, found sound stuff, and to amass samples, and he loves it. I can find out more when I'm back to work next week if you want?

One of the cheap zoom units has two XLR inputs as well as the two built in stereo mics - I always thought that would be good.

the two that i've been mostly looking at are both configured like that.

i'm mostly concerned with workflow, i guess.

i know that i just want to press record to start, stop etc. then when im happy press a couple of buttons then copy/paste to dropbox and be done with that part.

in 00 or so, i was using an old' korg digital recorder and it was really simple compared to the other ones on the market at that time.

i'd dust it off, except it has no built in mics and is SCSI our or whatever the ol "scuzzy" acronym was. im p sure this time around im going to need USB.

A little late to the party but I can vouch that the Zoom H4n does a good job of capturing a wide range of sources. I've used it for interviews, music (live and studio) and for actual field recording. It can do 4 channels simultaneously (2x built in SDC & 2 mics via XLR). The SDCs are of course, a little brash in the top end but very usable. Hope this helps (if it's not too late)!