I am looking for a handheld recorder to do some cheapo demos with my band & also record some of our shows; we are a 4 piece & play rock covers. I am going between the ls-10, dr-1, h4 & the M-audio unit for about the same price.
The sales man at my local music shop suggested the h4 since it’s the only one with XLR inputs to do recording thru a board. I’m not sure if I will ever want to fuss with that. Not to mention I think I liked the recordings of the ls-10 on this website a little better.
I just want the one that’s easiest to use & sounds the best!
Any suggestings???

Hi Mark
I have the TASCAM DR-1 and I like it a lot. It records in WAV so if you want to do a higher quality recording you can.
I have not had it a long time but some thoughts are:
It does a good job of recording thru the onboard mics.
It is easy to hook it up to record off the board. You only need to purchase a cord set that goes from two 1/4 jacks for out of the board to the mini jack into the recorder. When recording out of the board sometimes you miss the sound of a live recording. Especially the drums as many times they are not miced up.
If you are a guitar player it has some nice features for practice.
The HD-4 has more. I thought that the HD was a little to plastic and the controlls were not easy for my fat fingers and old guy eye sight.
My unit was easy to figure out how to use for the basic stuff. I'm yet to learn how to overdub etc.
We are looking at recording the pastors sermon at church and putting it on the web site. The couple time a have tried it with the DR-1 it has worked very slick to get the recorded sermon off the recorder and onto the computer. I have yet to figure out how to set up the file to send it via email to the person who posts it on the web site. I have to burn a CD. That is easy to do.
Good Luck
Jerry