At the Mystic Seamusic Festival, the individual performances done in the chapel are recorded using a laptop & an external mic... more than that I couldn't say. The stuff I see on youtube done by webcam can be pretty hard to listen to. I'm not sure how good usb mics are... anyone ever use them?

I record the symposiums using my R-09 running on the power adaptor instead of the AA batteries and using the internal mic if I can't get a line from the sound system. From there it's an easy step to downloading onto a PC & burning a CD even in my usual festival sleep deprived mode.

Using it on just batteries, I can still get a number of workshops recorded and with pretty good sound considering that they are held outside. These small, solid state, hand held units seems to be pretty good at making raw recordings that can be touched up later using good software.