Hi ,,,thank you to both of you for replying this was very nice of you to share your knowledge and time,I understand what you mean about getting distorted recordings and have educated myself as to how to get into the ''manual record'' feature as you mention,with your experience is there a chance that the plug in mic(Ecm ds30p) will handle the live recording if I am able to lower the recording level manuallyor am I just going to get a recording full of clipping(In any event I am going to get a headphone volume control)and try it,again I thank you for answering my post,all this advice was so amazing....I'll post back after I've tried this device next week and let you know how it handled the Mighty Van halen......: ) Lets hope it doesn't overload...haha....by the way this was my first post at the board...seems like a great place : )