Hi there!
Guys (any girls? ), I really need your advice:

I need a recorder to keep some of my jams. For the last two or three years I used a Zoom H1, mostly for its line in feature. My minimal setup is a Behringer 4 track mixer, connecting the tape out to the recorders line in. So its quite fast to record simple one take tunes. Beside my sp 202 I mostly use the mpc1/2k triggering samples and my analogues. Well it was quite fast nowmy h1 died.

Are there any suggestions? However I'm old enough to have started recording on a tape recorder back in the days, survived the minidisc age, got into software and now back to hardware and only want to use my laptop to postedit tracks and backup/copy to my smartphone/web/delete

I got a zoom r8 on Craigslist for $60.

Here's a list of my top features
- supports large SD cards 32gb/64gb
- runs on 4 aa batteries
- runs off USB power
- functions as an USB audio interface
- works as a midi controller via USB
- sampler with velocity sensitive pads
- drum machine with 200 sounds
- nice fx for mastering tracks

With that said I bought it mostly because it was so cheap and could be used for many different tasks (kinda like a Swiss Army knife). Once I got it home and played around for a couple days I was pretty happy with it. It works as advertised.

Hey, thanks for your reply!
Yeah, it's totally awesome .... but nothing for me. I had it played around and wished it hat MIDI. .
Even thought of a bigger brother with more line ins so I could skip the mixer. . If it had effects out may be. .

I'm so with you regarding multitracking but I made a choice and it's one take to quit:)

It felt a bit overboarded to me - or my purpose - I just want a recorder I think. ..

Well for the price the zoom r8 sells for I would easily recommend it as just a standalone recorder. It runs forever on batteries and the size is pretty small. It's basically a horizontal sp404 except thinner.

Maybe check out the boss micro br. Those are prolly cheap these days. Even the new little kaossilators can record incoming audio.

I have a Zoom H1 that I like a lot. Powered off USB or AA, can be used as audio interface, really good sounding stereo mic/line inputs, no bells and whistles. New is $99. I might have noticed a tiny bit of clicking noise when recording at very high gain but in a few years of use overall I am extremely impressed.

On the r8 it's hard to make stereo recordings that are equally panned. . And it's a bit too big to carry around.

So it seems like the answer is to replace my h1 with a new one. ..

DOH! I didn't even see you had an H1 already in your OP,
C