Portable WAV recorder for line level (mic inputs not important)

Hi all,

I'm looking into getting a portable recorder that can do WAV (MP3 too
could be useful depending on storage space). It'll be fed by the line
out of my band's mixer to record rehearsals and gigs, so I don't care
much about mic inputs or their quality (which seems to be the main
criticism of some recorders like Marantz's PMD series).

I had pretty much narrowed it down to the Sony MZ-RH10 Hi-MD recorder,
since it's cheaper (device and media) than the Edirol R-1, M-Audio
MicroTrack and Marantz PMD series and from what I've read the quality
is similar. I know the Edirol R-09 is round the corner and supposed to
be cheaper and better than the R-1, but I have a gig that I want to
record very shortly and can't wait for the R-09 to reach Europe.

I haven't investigated much but I understand there are some HD MP3
players with a line input and wondered how those compare with the Sony.
Are there any that can also record directly in WAV format and have
similar quality?

If not, are there any better quality/price ratio alternatives to the
MZ-RH10 worth looking into?

Finally, the latest version of Sony's software isn't supposed to have
any DRM limitations like the previous ones, is that right? I know
that's what they say, but, you know it's Sony, so it would be
reassuring to know that someone has actually used it and hasn't
encountered any problems copying files several times and so on.

Many thanks in advance,

Carlos

.

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