Does your recorder have a manual volume mode ? If you are using automatic volume control, the mechanism will do it's best to pick something when the level of sound that you are recording is very low. This means that relative silences will be amplified exessively which usually produces some hiss. AVC also tends to smooth out all the dynamics in whatever you're recording. Try using non AVC if you're recorder has it. I have an old SONY minidisk recorder and use a tiny single point stereo mic that I bought for about £20 from HENRY's RADIO, Edgware Road, London. I get some great his-free recordings using manual volume settings. If you are trying to record from a distance, the Camcorder style ultra-direction mic (as already suggested) is probably the best solution. These are usually mono though, so use it with a mono to stereo adapter (or if you're handy with soldering iron swap the jack plug for a stereo one with the output wired to both channels). If not you'll end up with no sound on one channel. A Stereo jack has another section after the tip, before the "ground" section.