in fact I did mention minidisk, and although sony have improved the atrac compression system, it still remains around 5:1 therefore better than mp3 but not as good as dat or cd for a master. The spec is open ended and backwards compatible to some extent, so improvements can be made to the psycho-acoustic masking algorithms that these compression systems rely on. But as Scott says fine for a finished stereo recording, not really suitable as a master if you are talking about spending money on condenser mikes etc, and tricky for multitracking, since you really want masters as good as you can get, and hopefully better than the eventual mixdown to avoid degradation. adat is a possiblity but maybe getting old hat now, but maybe you can get something cheap?

You have 2 questions -

do I need portability, or is it acceptable to be fixed to the pc (or laptop if you have one powerful enough)? a hard disk recorder might be needed for flexibility, but you are duplicating much that can be done with the pc.

is a 2 track master enough? ie can you mix and record without wanting to go back? if 2 tracks is enough then dat, audio cd, minidisk, etc might be acceptable. If you want to wave mutitrack and post produce with external (or software) processors, then a hard disk recorder or high end soundcard in (or external to) the pc is the answer.

[This message has been edited by technicsplayer (edited 02-14-2002).]