Are you spending $100 or $1000 or $10000?

A typical field recorder is not designed to record and simultaneously send to an amplifier. The king of the heap is the line from Sound Devices. They come in 2 channel up to 8 channel.

I beg to differ. A dedicated recorder doesn't have latency or dropouts or other issues low end computers have. To beat the quality of a high end field recorder you have to spend some big bucks. Then there is the issue of amount of gear to cart around.

Dan987654321, post: 370072 wrote: Hello all,
As a street musician, I am interested in knowing the best possible sound quality and set up I could have as far as using a portable mixer and recorder. For my CD project, instead of going into a studio I would like to capture my live performances with as good a quality as possible. Can someone point me in the right direction regarding best portable mixer and recorder combinations? At the least, I need to be able to record to two tracks, but four or more would be ideal. I also need to be able to apply basic EQ and compression. Finally, although this would be mainly for recording, I do have a portable amp and am wondering if a typical field recorder is also a pre-amp with outputs.
Thanks in advance....

I would not even think about doing anything other than recording the raw tracks out in the street. You don't need a mixer or EQ during the recording - that sort of thing comes in when you are mixing down your tracks while sitting at your computer.

I recorded a street musician (by request) a few years back as one of the tests I did using the Zoom H4N I had just bought at the time. I pointed the H4N's X-Y stereo mics at the performer and used a pair of omni-directional mics (Rode NT55) on stands as a spaced ambient pair on H4N channels 3 and 4. It worked quite well for the short sections of his performance that kind-spirited passing members of the public were not voicing obscenities into the ambient mics. At mixdown of the usable bits, I brought in only a little of the ambient pair, but it was worth having them to add an extra sense of dimension.