Bellingham, Wash.-based company Edirol announced on Tuesday the release of the R-1, a 24-bit portable digital recorder and player that’s compatible with the WAV and MP3 formats. It records files to CompactFlash cards up to 2GB in size and runs on a pair of AA batteries that bring its total weight to 10 ounces, or it can draw power from an AC adaptor. It’s approximately an inch taller than Apple’s iPod and is about twice as wide.
The R-1 features two omni-directional electret mics, an external line, mic inputs and a headphone jack as well as an internal effects processor that includes mic simulation. It also offers a metronome, tuner, half-speed playback and A-B repeat for music education purposes. The recorder/player comes with a 64MB CompactFlash card that can hold up to 130 minutes of MP3 files at 64kbps and it uses a USB 2.0 port to connect to your Mac. Pricing will be US$550 when it ships in November.