I bent my MD recorder on location and had to quickly buy an alternative to fulfill a job. I couldn't find a replacement MD to buy in the short time available so I bought one of the M-Audio flash card recorders (as linked to above).

After nearly a year, it has served me reasonably well but I wouldn't buy another one. Mostly it's because of the lack of external battery power. Rechargeable only isn't a good idea. Recording quality is fine. The Edirol 09 wasn't available when I bought originally but I'd consider it now. The Marantz I borrow from work and although it's good it's too big for my purposes.

I'm waiting to get my hands on an H2 from Samson.

I've considered MD again but the two things that put me off are the realtime transfer to digital and the lack of flexibity on recording quality. Also, for my purposes motor noise can occasionally be an issue and with flash recorders I forget it as a problem.

You won't find too many MDs left amongst the BBC programme makers now. Don't know what it's like anywhere else in the world.

J