New Australia & New Zealand Olympus Voice Distributor From Today – Olympus Imaging

Today, 15th December 2009, is day one for Olympus Imaging as they become the new distributor for Olympus voice products within Australia and New Zealand. Olympus Imaging has taken over from Nationwide Dictating who, after fifteen years of voice distribution, have called it a day. The Olympus website for information on Olympus voice products in … read more

A Little Gem From Philips Dictation Australia – 2370 Media Player Typing Set

In a recent press release from Philips Dictation Australia yet another innovative product has been added to their product line. This one though is a little different to the norm, this really is something different and something that I am sure will be very popular is the LFH2370 Philips Media Player Typing Set. The innovation … read more

Options For Playing Olympus .ds2 (DSS Pro) Audio Files If You Use Express Scribe Or Older Olympus Transcription Kits

How to play or convert Olympus .ds2 audio files to .dss


Download sample .dss and .ds2 audio files at the end of this blog post …

This is a hot topic in the transcription world. The DSS Pro (.ds2) audio format now in use by default on all the Olympus, Philips and Grundig digital dictaphones. It is a hot topic for a couple of reasons, often a transcriber can not play the new .ds2 audio files because:

  1. Transcriptionist has an older Olympus transcription kit (AS-2300 or AS-4000) with a RS-26 pedal
  2. Transcriptionist uses Express Scribe software free or paid version

There are a couple of ways to get around this (unless you just buy the right and latest software for transcription) and the options depend on what you have already and what operating system you use. I will try to cover all possible solutions, if I miss one please let me know and I will update this post. What I will say right from the outset is that these solutions are work arounds for typists who choose not to stay up-to-date with the latest software. By purchasing an Olympus AS-5000 transcription kit (or just the DSS Player Pro transcription module software AS-5002 if you already own an RS-28 Olympus foot pedal) all these issues will go away. The latest DSS Player Pro transcription module is fully compatible with the DSS Pro (.ds2) audio files.

So let me try and cover all options for those who do not have the latest DSS Player Pro transcription module.

read moreOptions For Playing Olympus .ds2 (DSS Pro) Audio Files If You Use Express Scribe Or Older Olympus Transcription Kits

I Will Have Whatever Olympus Voice & Philips Dictation Are Drinking

So, this year has been a big one for Olympus voice with a revamp of all their digital recorder range. Not content with being left behind Philips had a go back in April when they rolled out, finally, Mac compatible note takers with the DVT (Digital Voice Tracer) range comprising of the 660/860/880 models. This … read more

4 Good Reasons To Convert From Tape Dictaphones To Digital Voice Recorders

At Dictate Australia we often get calls from people who have been using their trusy Pearlcorder micro or mini cassette dictaphone for years who are in a slight panic. Either their analogue tape dictaphone has given up the ghost or they can’t find replacement cassettes or their tape based transcription kit has retired after years … read more

Listening to Keynotes, What Digital Recorder? – LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen or Olympus WS-450S or iProRecorder

This week I was lucky enough to attend FlyingSoloLIVE, an expo run by the FlyingSolo team held at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney. The day consisted of a number of keynote speeches by well known successful Australian business people and social media experts all aimed to educate and inspire Australian solo and small business … read more

Bonjour, Guten Tag, Ciao – MacSpeech Dictate Goes Euro With French, German and Italian Language Support

MacSpeech Inc, the creators of MacSpeech Dictate voice recognition software for Mac powered by the Dragon speech recognition engine, today announced out of their headquarters in the US a new product in the MacSpeech Dictate range: MacSpeech Dictate International. The International version will ship with voice support for four languages, English (UK and US), French, … read more

Review: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Digital Voice Recorder Edition – Philips 660/10

## UPDATE 2012 ## Should you buy the Dragon NaturallySpeaking DVR Edition? Blog looks at the functionality of DVR compared to other Dragon NaturallySpeaking versions. Have a read if you are considering buying the Dragon Voice Recorder Edition.

## UPDATE 2011 ## This review was initially for the LFH0660/10 – this has been replaced in Australia in 2010 by the new model LFH0617/00. The software is the same, the recorder included in the pack is different. The Dragon NaturallySpeaking DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) Edition now contains the LFH0612 Philips digital voice tracer. The below review is still relevant, the software is setup and trained the same way with the new pack.

Released mid 2009 in Australia in a joint venture between Philips Dictation and Nuance was the Philips Dragon NaturallySpeaking Voice Recorder Edition (LFH0660/10) at an incredibly cheap price of RRP AU$259.00 incl. GST. At that price it certainly makes you sit up and pay attention, after all the package contains Dragon NaturallySpeaking v10 and a very competent Philips Digital VoiceTracer 660.

Not much to say about the Philips DVT 660, a great little recorder, perfect for single speaker audio. The 660 records in MP3 format and like all recorders has multiple recording modes (tip: always use the highest quality recording mode, SHQ on the DVT 660). This is a note taker not a dictaphone so you are not able to rewind/review your audio just simply record and stop, although you can pause during recordings. The recorder has 1Gb of in-built flash memory, can be powered by two AAA batteries or by USB and can record on the highest quality audio setting for 17.5 hours.

read moreReview: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Digital Voice Recorder Edition – Philips 660/10