Tascam DR-05 Portable Digital Recorder

• Specifications -
• Handheld Portable Recorder
• Built-in Stereo Condenser Omnidirectional Microphones with sensitivity up to 125dB SPL
• Up to 96kHz/24-bit WAV (BWF) linear PCM recording
• Stereo MP3 recording from 32-320 kbps bit rate

I purchased this to record my daughter's piano recitals. I researched the options and found this to give me the best feature set for the money. What was important to me was easy transfer of files to my PC, good battery life, cheap and expandable media, ease of use, choice of manual and auto record levels, and the ability to change recording levels once recording has started. And of course it should make good sounding recordings!

This device met all of these criteria both on paper an in actual use. To play around with it, I have been recording my daughter's practice sessions. I was shocked at the sound quality even from the built in microphones. The resulting recording had no hiss, had good punch in the low end, didn't audibly distort even when the peak light would light, and had great stereo imaging. Wow! Transferring files to my PC is literally drag-n-drop since the device appears as an external drive when connected to the PC. I've recorded about 5 hours along with about 3 hours of playback and the battery charge indicator still hasn't dropped. This is using the provided alkaline batteries.

I upgraded to a 16GB memory card that cost me

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