iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

Adding to the mountain of new Olympus digital voice recorders about to launch in Australia this month (September 2010) is the stunning new DM-5. Joining the DM-450 and DM-550 in the DM series the Olympus DM-5 heralds a new look voice recorder for the Olympus brand.

As always with Olympus recorders, they are packed full of features, huge amounts of memory and probably the best audio recording quality you can get from a digital voice recorder. If you are recording an interview, meeting, focus group or the speaker at a conference or lecture you won’t go wrong with an Olympus digital note taker. Here are some of the features included with the new DM-5:

• Massive 8Gb of in-built memory
• Record in .mp3, .wma or PCM .wav
• Mac & Windows compatible, plug-and-play no software required
• 3 Programmable buttons to easily access your favourite feature
• Voice activated recording
• Rechargeable batteries: charge from USB or mains power
• 29 Hours of battery life
• Expandable memory via microSD slot
• Mic record level controls
• Huge 2.2 inch backlit colour display

So as you can see not just an awesome, high quality voice recorder but choc-a-block with features and memory. I have mentioned in previous blog posts how the trend for note takers is moving away from just being recorders. Again we see mountains of memory, more than you would ever need for voice recording alone (522 hours on the highest quality record mode) so the humble digital voice recorder now becomes your  backup drive, your mass storage device for documents/photos/videos and your media player for music, podcasts or audio books (audible.com compatible).

Something new for Olympus recorders is the large, 2.2 inch, colour screen. At a glance the status of your recording can be viewed without the need to cycle around menus, its all there in full colour. Flicking through the menus is also easier and clearer thanks to the vast amounts, compared to other voice recorders, of screen real estate. We hope to get one of the first DM-5′s into our office in the next day or two, as soon as we do we will post a blog review with audio samples and some close up pics.

RRP for the DM-5 in Australia is $599 incl. GST and they are expected to be available in Australia from 8th September 2010 onwards.

Another month, another round of new digital voice recorders coming from Olympus Imaging Australia. This month we sadly see the end of life for the WS-450S, WS-550M and WS-560M digital voice recorders, although stock of these will last for a month or two yet. Sad because these little recorders certainly keep the benchmark very high when it comes to digital note taking and for interview and meeting recording. The good news is they are being replaced by even more stunning recorders in the form of the WS-650S, WS-750M, WS-760M and a new addition to the DM series the new DM-5, where to begin !

Lets start with the new range of WS series recorders; perfect for interviews, meetings, focus groups, lectures and conferences.

Here are their features at a glance …

Olympus WS-650S (RRP $169 incl. GST)

• 2Gb In built memory
• .mp3 or .wma recording
• Mac & Windows compatible

Olympus WS-750M (RRP $229 incl. GST)

• 4Gb In built memory
• Linear PCM recording (.wav)
• .mp3 or .wma recording
• Micro SD slot for expanded memory
• USB chargeable battery
• Mac & Windows compatible

Olympus WS-760M (RRP $269 incl. GST)

• Massive 8Gb in built memory
• Linear PCM recording (.wav)
• .mp3 or .wma recording
• Micro SD slot for expanded memory
• USB chargeable battery
• FM Radio Receiver
• FM Radio Recording
• Virtual Zoom Mic – Focus precisely on a single, distant audio source
• Auto Recording – Essential for long recording sessions, save battery power and cuts down superfluous recording.
• Mac & Windows compatible

As you can see a very slight design change from the last set of WS series recorders, the mics have been placed on the top of the unit now. One of the reasons for this is to allow the recorder to sit in a shirt or jacket top pocket and record. Also, there is a choice of colours for the units, well overseas anyway, we are yet to see if colour options come to Australia. What continues to amaze me is the amount and the cheapness of the storage, 8Gb is a huge amount of storage for a voice recorder which obviously now transforms it from just an excellent digital voice recorder into being also a music/podcast player and media mass storage device.

Details on the new Olympus DM-5 to follow …. the DM-5 will have an RRP in Australia of $599 incl. GST

Of course all these recorders will be available to buy from Dictate Australia – Olympus Gold Partner – with super fast delivery Australia wide.

Any questions or for further information grab us in one of many ways. Not sure of anything please ask, we are quite friendly you know:

• Phone: 1300 787 092 (option 2)
• Email: sales@dictate.com.au
• Twitter: @dictates
• Facebook: facebook.com/dictate.australia

Click here to read the Olympus Europe press release for the new WS series recorder.

Digital voice recorders are split into two distinct types, digital dictaphones and digital notetakers, both have fairly specific uses. In this blog post I will try and explain the difference so you will know which type of voice recorder to lean towards, should you ever need to record voice. If you are still not sure please call or email and get some advice, often people buy a voice recorder without fully researching a product only to find that the recorder they buy does not have the functions they thought they wanted or needed.

Slider Switch On The Olympus DS-5000 Digital Dictaphone

So here I will try to clear up some of the confusion between the two digital voice recorder types and will attempt to explain what each is commonly used for. Generally speaking the functionality of the recorders includes:

Digital Notetaker

• Typically used to record multiple speaker audio: lectures, interviews, meetings, focus groups etc.
• Audio is usually recorded in one take or with few interruptions.
• High quality mic is required to pickup all the speakers.

Digital Dictaphone

• Typically for single speaker audio – just one person dictating.
• Typically used for recording letters or short notes.
• For people who are interupted alot during their dictation session.
• Includes rewind/review functionality emulating the old analogue tape dictaphones.

Above are just a few generalisations about to two recorder types. Here at Dictate Australia we tend to find that the digital dictaphones usually go to people who are converting from analogue tape dictaphones and are usually in the medical or legal industry. Digital dictaphones have a rewind/review function, this allows the recorder to emualte the old analogue tape systems. The rewind/review function is typically activated using a slider switch, the image to the left is the slider on the Olympus DS-5000 digital dictaphone. The user can stop and start recording at will and the key point here is that when recording is re-started they are able to “rewind” the digital audio a little, hear what was said last and then continue recording from that point onward, much like a tape. When they have completed their dictation they press a button and one distinct audio file is created. Digital dictaphones tend to utilise the DSS (Digital Speech Standard) audio format which results in very small digital audio files (.ds2 or .dss), making them easy to transfer across the internet via email.

With a digital notetaker, these are generally used to record an audio session, typically lectures, interviews, sound bites, meetings and focus groups. Although alot of people do use these for single speaker notes also. These types of voice recorders are very simple to use, press a button to start recording, press another button to stop recording. This then produces a single digital audio file. It is possible with most notetaker models to pause/resume recording however unlike the digital dictaphones you can NOT rewind/review audio and then continue recording.  Digital notetakers tend to record in more proprietry audio formats like .WMA (Windows Media Audio) as well as the more common .MP3 (MPEG-3 layer) format. Many can now also record very high quality PCM .WAV files. Because of the high quality of the audio the file sizes tend to be much larger than those produced by the dictaphones. Add this to the fact the a meeting/interiew/focus group could go on for hours the files recorded would be too large to email.

Moving large files around the internet is common practice, most good transcription companies, like The Transcription People, have their own secure webservers for client audio files. You can also use free or cheap services like Dropbox to move files around.

Digital notetakers tend to have excellent all round audio pickup as they are designed for multi speaker recording. Conversly, the digital dictaphones tend to be poor when used in meetings situations. We have seen that in the past with the Olympus DS-4000 dictaphone, when used in a one on one interview the audio pickup was very poor. Olympus have rectified this in the newer DS-5000 model which as a top of the range professional recorder can easily cope with a large number of multiple speakers aswell as being probably the best digital dictaphone around for single speaker notes and letters.