Topic: small hand held records for diction

[spcyrfc]

looking to pick something up relatively cheap to keep in my car/pocket to carry around and talk to...

i have a d50 and it is an all around winner imo.  12+ hrs on battery life, 12+hrs recording.  cant be beat there, but if it's cumbersome to pocket all the time.  looked at the LS-10.  thing is small.

i would want replaceable batteries and sd memory.  battery life is probably the most important thing.

any help is appreciated.

[Belexes]

R-09HR is very small, about $300, takes SD cards and I think 15 hours of battery life with 2 AA's.

I own both it and the D50.

[spcyrfc]

R-09HR is very small, about $300, takes SD cards and I think 15 hours of battery life with 2 AA's.

I own both it and the D50.

do you have a preference?

in what situations do you use one over the other?   15 hrs on 2AA, i didn't know that great runtime.  is that with rechargables? 

[Belexes]

I am sorry, I mixed up battery life between my recorders. R-09HR is about 5.5 hours.  That may not be enough for you.

The D50 has digi-in and I am a former Sony DAT customer.  It's built like a tank, very solid, and I like the dial control for the gain.  Its size is it's downfall, so the R-09HR is an acceptable substitute for my needs as most concerts I record fall in the 1.5-2 hour range.

[flintstone]

There's no need to spend $300, or even $100, to get a decent dictation recorder.  You don't need a PCM recorder to make voice notes. A compressed format like MP3 is fine for voice.

Sony, Olympus, Sanyo and maybe other manufacturers make personal voice recorders that sell for less than $100.   Sony tends to use its Memory Stick format for flash memory, so if you want SD cards you should look to the other vendors.  Some recorders don't have removable memory, substituting built-in memory instead.  Since you can fit more than 100 hours of voice-quality MP3 into 512KB of memory, you don't need a lot of storage space.

Here's one recorder to consider:  the Olympus DS-40.  I see it online for right around $100.  It plays MP3, WMA, Audible and Olympus proprietary file formats, and runs for many hours on 2 AAA cells.
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1277

And here's a Sanyo ICR-FP600D, with slot for SDHC card for about $85
http://us.sanyo.com/Digital-Voice-Recorder-Products/SANYO-ICR-FP600D-Digital-MP3-Voice-Recorder-with-expandable-SD-card-memory-slot

Flintstone

[sunjan]

There's no need to spend $300, or even $100, to get a decent dictation recorder.  You don't need a PCM recorder to make voice notes.

Good point. If you do want it to double as a PCM recorder though, take a look at Pocketrak 2G. Smallest of the ones for sale in USA. It uses micro-SD, maybe that's a dealbreaker for you?
Retails for $177:
http://www.google.com/products?q=pocketrak&oe=utf-8&hl=en&lnk=pruser&price1=130&price2=195

There are even smaller/cheaper PCM dictaphones by Sanyo, but you'd have to order them from Japan...

[spcyrfc]

thanks for all the advice. 

those sanyo's look nice.  it would be nice to double as pcm, but then again, it doesn't have to as i am still a preamp away from two rigs.

i think im going to pick up a 4 gb micro sd and try out diction into my cell phone.  only problem, the voice note program is buried in the menu.  cell phone is a blackberry pearl.

again, thanks all.

[Kevin T]

I test audio ay VZW and thr RIM devices generally have good mics / electro acoustics. Most phone voice recorder features use only very lossy low rate file types which may or maynot be a big problem for you. 

[John Willett]

looking to pick something up relatively cheap to keep in my car/pocket to carry around and talk to...

i have a d50 and it is an all around winner imo.  12+ hrs on battery life, 12+hrs recording.  cant be beat there, but if it's cumbersome to pocket all the time.  looked at the LS-10.  thing is small.

i would want replaceable batteries and sd memory.  battery life is probably the most important thing.

any help is appreciated.

LS-10 has over 10 hours battery life, easily pocketable, easy to use and would be a good back-up to your PCM-D10 at any time.

If you *only* want a dictation machine and nothing else - then an Olympus dictating unit would be cheaper - personally I would get the LS-10.

[sunjan]

LS-10 has over 10 hours battery life, easily pocketable, easy to use and would be a good back-up to your PCM-D10 at any time.

If you want 24bit and are willing to pay for it, the LS-10 is actually down to as low as $220:
http://www.alwayslowest.com/AL/index.cfm?fuseaction=shop.dspSpecs&part=2711675

Still 40 bucks more than the Pocketrak 2G, but the price is good if you need it.

[spcyrfc]

LS-10 has over 10 hours battery life, easily pocketable, easy to use and would be a good back-up to your PCM-D10 at any time.

If you want 24bit and are willing to pay for it, the LS-10 is actually down to as low as $220:

looking to pick something up relatively cheap to keep in my car/pocket to carry around and talk to...

i have a d50 and it is an all around winner imo.  12+ hrs on battery life, 12+hrs recording.  cant be beat there, but if it's cumbersome to pocket all the time.  looked at the LS-10.  thing is small.

i would want replaceable batteries and sd memory.  battery life is probably the most important thing.

any help is appreciated.

LS-10 has over 10 hours battery life, easily pocketable, easy to use and would be a good back-up to your PCM-D10 at any time.

If you *only* want a dictation machine and nothing else - then an Olympus dictating unit would be cheaper - personally I would get the LS-10.

hmmm...