losing battle

I have been wanting one for awhile and since I have a band again I see a need for having one for recording practices and having something to use for rough schetches for songs. Sound doesn't need to be perfect but it can't sound like a can of bees. Budget is arround $100 USD we play metal lots with lots of gain.

__________________

ChemicalFire

Well if you're playing with "lots of gain" then you probably wouldn't get good results even on a proper recording.

Lower Gain = Heavier

Higher Gain = Mess of staticy sounds

__________________

losing battle

Well a dual recto with the gain turned to 7.5, no need to be snippy.

__________________

GaryBillington

There's information about all sorts of portable recorders on the interfaces sticky.

$100 won't get you much, so you're likely to have to hit the used market.

__________________

losing battle

I found an zoom h4 and a few random tascams, so I was wondering they are any good. Remember its primary job would be to tape practice so my band can listen for any real issues that were not picking up on and if see if a song is actually worth recording, can't hit a home run everytime you swing the bat.

__________________

GaryBillington

If you just want to get a really basic recording of your practices so you can playback & hear yourself immediately, the Zoom H4 will be OK.

Hard to comment on the "random Tascams" as that could mean anything from the old cassette based Portastudio (a definite 'no') or a state of the art DAW like a 2488.

__________________

losing battle

Tascam dr1,dr7, dr8, dr2d, actually saw a video where it sounded pretty good in a full band scenerio so its a legit canidate now, id grab the sony m10 or whatever the hell is the $250 one if it wasn't out of range. I'm not using them for demo's maybe record live shows. But really just to hear ourselves play so um yeah.

__________________

GaryBillington

Much like the Zoom, pretty much any of those Tascams would get the job done - so long as you really just want to be able to get a basic playback of a practice session.

Using a simple device like any of those you've mentioned will be more dependent on the room you practice in, where in the room you put it and getting the levels spot on during the pre-practice soundcheck. That will be mostly common sense - put it near the drummer, you'll only hear drums, put it near a guitar amp, you'll only hear guitar.

__________________