iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

Some surprising news out of Olympus Australia yesterday, the Olympus DS-50 digital voice recorder which was perfect for large meetings and focus groups has been discontinued in Australia and replaced with a new model the Olympus DS-65.

With the demise of the DS-50 I would assume that the days are numbered also for the popular DS-30 and DS-40 recorders, likely they will both be replaced when the DS-55 comes down under in the near future.

From the outside the blue DS-65 looks the same as the DS-50, same size, same fantastic stereo mic tagged on the top. The difference between the models lies in the internals. Some of the key differences with the Olympus DS-65 are:

• 2Gb of internal memory (double that of the DS-50 which had 1Gb)
• Max. recording time of 33hours 50mins on the highest quality recording mode STXQ
• Support for Audible .aa audio format for audio books

The Olympus DS-65 comes in at the same RRP as the DS-50 which is currently $795 incl. GST and is available now from Dictate Australia and other official Olympus Australia distributors.

Here are the full specifications for the Olympus DS-65…

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In the dark and mysterious world of transcription, well not really dark and mysterious just needed to make it a little more exciting than it really is, the most common software used by transcription typists is Express Scribe from NCH SwiftSound. This is great software for two key reasons, 1) it is free $0 2) it is Australian made, NCH Swift Sound are an Australia company based in Canberra.

Primarily because of key reason 1 above this makes it very popular with the army of Virtual Assistants (VAs) around the world who like to include transcription in their portfolio of services offered. Sure on its own Scribe works really well and for some, especially those with no transcription experience, having no footpedal is not a big deal. But for the serious transcriptionist or for people converting from analogue transcription kits (ahh those trusty Pearlcorders), a good reliable foot pedal is a must.

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So there I was, on my early morning commute down to Sydney on the train, checking my email in between games of FlightControl when BAM! this graphic jumped out at me from an email:

MacSpeech Dictate Upgrade to Version 1.5 Announced

Being a reseller for MacSpeech Dictate since its release back in February 2008 I thought I might have, you know, been told it was coming. So as a reseller and user of MacSpeech Dictate I was just a little surprised. MacSpeech Dictate is the worlds leading voice recognition software for Mac OS X. Launched at MacWorld in 2008 it won Best In Show that year.

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Philips Dictation Australia recently advised that their hugely popular and successful revamped Digital Voice Tracer (DVT) range of digital notetakers will be subject to a price increase starting 1st June, 2009. 

The price rise has been attributed to a slide in the Aussie dollar against the Euro, Philips Dictation’s head office is in Vienna, Austria.

Philips Digital Voice Tracer Range

So what are the new Australian dollar RRP’s including GST for the DVTs:

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On a quiet Tuesday evening, nothing much to do, thought I would do some surfing on the web. Called into one of the most static sites you will find, the Olympus Voice Australia website. Clicked on the what’s new link and boom – DS-3400 Coming Soon !

Why was I surprised by this? Well, apart from the fact that the site rarely changes, with Dictate Australia being one of Olympus’ top online resellers we thought we might have, you know, been told!

Here is some information I have gleaned so far. Nobody seems to know when this is coming to Australia, I would estimate towards the end of Q3 2009, but this is just a guess, nothing official from Olympus Voice as yet.

Pricing is also a guessing game, I have the recorder on my site at an estimated RRP of $540 incl. GST, this is going from the RRP on the Olympus America website. My thoughts are that it will be around the same price as the DS-2300 model which is due to be replaced shortly by the DS-2400. Time will tell and there will be updates here as soon as I know.

A quick skim through the specs the things that jump out at me are: there is no cradle as there is no power option, this one runs on batteries only. As is the trend at Olympus this will record in the DS2 (DSS Pro) format although the recorder comes with DSS Pro software so “classic mode” may be available. There is no slider on the side like the DS-5000, instead there are push buttons, similar to the old DS-3300.

More news as and when it comes from Olympus on the new digital dictaphone …