I'm researching the right piece of audio equipment that I can bring
along my trips to document sounds and voices of different environments
and places I'll visit. I'm planning to use these audio recordings to
create compelling sountracks that will be part of multimedia
photostories of my travels. The final multimedia slideshow will be
deployed on the Web using Macromedia Flash.

Here are a few examples of the kind of recording I'll do:
- the voices of the people buying and selling stuff at a free market
- the roar of people at a stadium
- the voice of a priest during a religious celebration

Despite I'll need to lower the quality of the final sound to save
bandwidth, I'd prefer to capture these sounds in high quality with a
good recorder device that I can connect to my PC.

I'm new to voice recorders and I'd appreciate your advice on the
following matters:
- is the voice recorder an appropriate tool to use for this purpose?
- If so, is there any technical requirement I should look at when I
buy one (like type of mic, sound quality, directional mic or other
spec)?
- Do you happen to have a recommendation for a good brand?

Thanks in advance for your feedback
pt