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[Walt Atwood]

Here's a question for those who work regularly with audio recording, especially portable recording. Maybe Ken might have some feedback.

In late January, a fellow volunteer from another state called me about participating in a public teleconference. The group wanted me to record the event, but I didn't have the equipment for it. Voice recording was never my specialty. Since that time, the public teleconference occurred and another volunteer recorded the event successfully. The other volunteer resides hundreds of miles from here. So in the end, we were able to handle that particular teleconference but I'm still concerned about recording future public meetings and/or teleconferences that may occur.

Up to now, my experience was with video-recording these kinds of meetings when they were held locally. The recent teleconference made it clear to me that our local business and volunteer contacts are behind the times when it comes to Digital Voice Recording. I intend to rectify that by carefully purchasing the right equipment for future events.

I was looking at a few of the possibilities at a local OfficeMax. OfficeMax had mostly Olympus models on display, a few Sonys as well. Most of them, like the Olympus VN-6200 PC and Sony ICD-UX71, use built-in (non-removable) solid state recording storage. At least one Olympus, the DM-420, also offered a SD Card (removable solid state) slot. Of course, all were priced at MSRP. Looking these and related models on the web, I wondered:

1: Does one brand offer any advantages over another? Who's in the market other than Sony and Olympus?

2: Are the really fancy pro-level "dictation" models any better, and do the removable card slots make a difference?

3: I noticed that Sony's ICD-UX71 mentioned Mac compatibility on the packaging. Are any of the players in this field really refined / extra-Mac-friendly on the computerization side of things?

4: When it comes to recording hearings and other public meetings in a meeting hall, are there any special recording features to look for? Do they make a difference? (One lady I've talked to from outside my local area says her Olympus DS-50 does offer such settings, to great effect.)

5: What kind of battery life do these devices offer?

A gentleman on another forum recommended this pro-audio link for me to check out:

http://forums.oreilly.com/content/Audio-Community/20/Portable-Digital-Recorders/

It seems pretty high-end. Definitely professional. That's obviously the place to learn what "the best of the best" is. The Olympus LS-10 isn't that far from the consumer stuff I was looking at while shopping OfficeMax.

Thanks in advance,

--WA

[Walt Atwood]

Added comments:

Just to clarify, if I go ahead and purchase a digital voice recorder, it will be used for multiple purposes:

Possible uses for the unit include:

1: recording of future public planning meetings and teleconferences, (none announced yet) for the purpose of record-keeping (possibly burning to CD-R and/or storing on a hard drive for future reference) and possibly also for dispersal over the internet as a podcast; some folks may be

2: recording of personal and business notes (my family operates a small business, not in the legal profession, though we are all Mac users since the 1980's)

3: recording of interviews for the purpose of sharing the interviews over the internet

4: outside chance of recording music at a jam session involving fiddles, guitars, banjos, bass fiddles, etc.


MP3 seems to be a desired lowest-common-demonenator file format for the finished product as far as posting files on the 'net or storing them. I suppose I would be using GarageBand '09 for editing and/or podcast preparation.

I'm on a MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz, MacOS 10.6, iLife 2009.

Thank you and I look forward to your responses.

[RadaR]

Walt,
I recently heard about a good audio recorder from Leo Laporte on the Daily Giz Wiz Podcast.  More info here:
http://gizwizbiz.squarespace.com/daily_giz_wiz_gadgets/?currentPage=2

[Walt Atwood]

Thanks for the link!

I'll keep this recorder in mind.

[Walt Atwood]

Does anyone want to share any feelings regarding a comparison of the Olympus LS-10 to the Zoom H4N mentioned above by RadaR?

Thanks in advance,

WA

[matcochr]

As well as the Zoom H4n there is the Zoom H2, the Edirol R-09HR, M-Audio Microtrack II, Yamaha Pocketrak (C24, CX, W24, 2G) and the Korg MR-1. I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them just now.

I currently use the Zoom H4 for quick portable recording, which works quite well (I believe the H4n is better but can't justify the upgrade at this point). I've heard very good things about the Olympus as well so you might want to try them out and see which one you find to be most intuitive.

You may want to consider power as well, which might not be a consideration if you can plug the unit in, but if you need to change batteries in a hurry then you'd want that to be an easy process. Some devices can also be recharged, with a charge pack and/or via USB.

All of these devices should work with Mac; you just plug a USB cable in and the device mounts on your desktop like an external drive. Alternatively if the device uses SSD card or CompactFlash you can simply take the card out and load it into your computer via a card reader.

I like to have multiple cards ready because that way I can do a quick change if I'm running out of space to record on (I tend to record uncompressed files at CD quality or higher), but with MP3s a couple of gigabytes should give you several hours of record time easily.