You're playing bass with your reggae band and the drummer breaks into this unique, inside-out Stewart Copeland-meets-Zigaboo Modeliste groove… and you've never heard anything like it. And you never will again - unless, of course, you recorded it.

When you pack up for rehearsals or gigs, the last thing you have room for is a bulky hardware recorder with all of its cables and interfaces. Or even worse, if you record with your computer, you have to set it all up, wait for the system to load up, and then just hope that it doesn't crash while Skins McKick Drum is doing his one-drop take on Fool In The Rain.

The people at Alesis thought long and hard about this problem and came up with the perfect solution - recording directly into your iPod. If you're like most people, you have one; maybe you even have more than one. Alesis' MultiPort is a compact, desktop recording interface that lets you connect nearly any input and record to your iPod, which can be docked on the handy Universal Dock on top. Slick.

MultiPort can fit anywhere on a gig: on top of your amp, next to your monitor wedge, maybe even in some unused space on your mixing console. You just plug it into the tape-out or any other output from your mixer, and away you go with a clean, 44.1 kHz digital recording of the show.

While you're playing the gig, you can keep an eye on the level meter or an ear on the mix with the headphone out to make sure that your recordings are coming through the way you expect. The onboard limiter keeps you clipping-safe when things get out of hand on stage. When you're done recording, playback is a snap with a pair of 1/4" outputs and big set of iPod transport controls.

Say the next day you're going to play with your acoustic piano trio, and you want to record that too, but there's no PA. Well, everything needs to get miked up and and fed into a mixer, right? Not with MultiPort. Just plug in a pair of condenser mics and MultiPort will supply them with 48 volts of phantom power and you can record Autumn Leaves directly into that iPod!

After your jazz jam, you head home and you want to listen to the day's recordings and maybe lay down a few more tracks on top. You could dock your iPod and transfer the tracks into your computer's iTunes library, set up mics, plug in your audio interface, your direct box, and get it all synced in your different audio applications. Or, you could just connect your MultiPort to your computer via the USB jack and you've just added a handy digital audio interface to your computer!

You can record to your computer or to your iPod, or record to and play back the iPod at the same time. And if you don't have any audio software on your machine, Alesis even thought of that. They include a pair of programs with MultiPort: Steinberg Cubase LE 4 for recording and Ableton Live Lite Alesis Edition for sequencing and performance.

Between your gear, your adoring fans, and all the keys to your houses, yachts, and sports cars, you already have enough to port around. Alesis' MultiPort makes recording anything, anywhere simple and easy, and picking one up won't even require a call to your accountant.

• Record directly to iPod (Classic or 5th generation) and iPod nano (2nd or 3rd generation)
• Record directly to Mac or PC via USB
• Works with all docking iPod models when used through iTunes
• Playback from iPod while recording at the same time
• Mic/line inputs for crystal-clear recording of any source
• Level meters for easy-to-read level monitoring
• Combo XLR - 1/4" inputs (pair)
• 1/4" outputs (pair) and 1/4" stereo headphone out