Portable recording equipment

#1 Choose something that allows for an external microphone and variable recording sensitivity. While microphones are expensive, even a horrid $5 microphone from walmart will usually give you better quality than an internal microphone on even high-priced electronics. Also, avoid budget digital recorders. If you have to do tape, do tape. The quality doesn't seem like it would be that much better, but most budget recorders use extremely horrid compression techniques which will cut off your high-and-low ends of sound data. While just about any device will have voice activation available, turn it off. The high-low ends will be cut off even more (plus the power delay). Once you start going tor a straight 1/4" or XLR input to avoid step-down convertors, you'll be looking at an increase in cost without much of an increase in performance (a $100 1/8" usually has comprable quality to a $500 1/4" when it comes to the internal hardware, you just don't lose the step-down quality).