I've always found it useful to record band rehearsals. We don't have our own place, so we have to use a commercial rehearsal studio that rents out rooms in 3-hour blocks. It's hard to do a proper recording in such a room, because you can't really set up proper mics and stuff in a 3-hour time slot. We've tried various kinds of cheap portable recorders before, but usually the mics are distorted due to the high volume and somehow those recordings are always noisy as hell.
Recently my drummer borrowed an Edirol R09 from a friend. Now that's a cool gadget. Two built-in condenser mics with an adjustable sensitivity so it's easy to prevent distortion. Very low noise. Can record in both raw data and mp3 format, I think. Downside is that it's a bit expensive, close to $400 I think.
From a discussion on the Other Forum it appears Zoom have a similar recorder out, less expensive with more features. Haven't tried that one though.
