Inexpensive portable recording devices for field recordings

[gurdonark]

Hello:

Thanks in part to this forum, I'm up, running and making odd synth-like sounds on my home computer.

But now the search for sampled sounds for my little string art sampler begins.

I took my portable cassette player outdoors, hoping to capture the tones of the local katydids at night, which can put up tones far more pleasing than the early Roland synthesizer.

I found the recording very hard to do. I visited the nature recordists' message group on yahoo, and did some reading on google, and now understand the kind of microphones they use, and can solve the mic problems inherent in recording natural ambience.

But the portable recorder issue is something they seem behind the times about. Cassette, with its hiss, and snap crackle pop, is behind the times.

Mini-discs get a frequent recommendation, as do the newer digital recorders in other format.

But I'll bet someone here has purchased the ideal solution, which is:

a. inexpensive--main criterion
b. not voice-activated, as birdsong and cricket sound will not be recognizable as "voices";
c. has a mic input for an external mike;
d. has a headphone output for a "line out" and
e. generates a "clean" digital sound, is fully portable, and will let me record what I wish to record, assuming I mic it properly.

Thanks in advance if anyone knows of something like what I need. Granted, once I have run the sounds through my Slicer software, they may sound like buzzard song rather than birdsong, but I'd like to generate my own bit of cricket synthesis.