R-DATs are getting rare, as are their tapes. I use a Masterlink, but only in the studio. It's taken Alesis 3 tries to get me one that ships to me intact without "hairline fractures in the PCB from shipping". Needless to say, no live gigs for that puppy. Have you checked out the Marantz CD recorders?

What about one of the new flash recorders, liek the microtrack or something? They do 24 bit.

You don't need 24-bit! The flash recorders basically use the same compression scheme as your MiniDisc, I- pod, et al.. It's all compressed. If your levels are decent along with Yamaichi technique MP3 and the other compression schemes should sound adequate. If you don't like that wavy underwater effect, then uncompressed is the only way to go and 16-bit would-be adequate. A decent off-the-shelf CD recorder like Sony that includes " super bitmapping" along with a limiter and equalization would be the ticket. I mean what do you really want 24-bit for? You want that for archiving. But you probably just want to pop in a CD to listen to yourself. Be practical.

Practically yours
Remy Ann David

Hey Remy -

Most of the Flash recorders don't use compression (or if they do, they are selectable this way). You can record uncompressed at 24 bit on just about all of them that I'm aware of.

However, also bear in mind, you can now record on MiniDisc uncompressed as well (though, you have to get one of the new MD recorders capable of recording 1Gig to a MD). This is also uncompressed, though (and I may be wrong) it is 16 bit (which I don't see as a problem).

Also, bear in mind that ATRAC 3 (Sony's compression algorithm) is far less invasive than MP3 compression or the schemes which are used by iTunes.

My advice would be, for a cheap location 2 track recorder (in order of preference)
1 - Small flash recorder (m-audio or the likes)
2 - New HiRes MiniDisc
3 - Good ole' fashion DAT

For live recordings, you simply don't need 24 bit (unless you're recording in Meyerhoff Symphony Hall or the like).

Just my $.02

J