Olympus DS-50 - Digital voice recorder - flash 1 GB - WMA, MP3

Discount Price: $248.75

Customer Reviews:

The best of the best [Posted on 2007-09-07]
You can't brag too much about this recorder-it should get an award. I took it to the jungle to record background jungle sounds, waterfalls, and frogs. The quality of sound was amazing. And it is easy to use. The battery seems to last forever.

A Remarkable Little Device [Posted on 2007-09-26]
I bought this recorder to replace my aging portable cassette recorder. I was astounded by the compact size of the unit. It's smaller and lighter in weight than even my microcassette recorder, but there is a whole range of recording quality settings, both monaural and stereo. There is a monaural microphone build right into the recorder, and this gives quite nice sound. The included external stereo microphone can be mounted right to the top of the recorder or connected at a distance using the included extension cable with built-in recording on/off switch and pocket clip. The stereo microphone is a bit heavy on the treble and lacking on the bass, but it's sensitive and works fine for a variety of purposes.

I am totally blind, so nonvisual access to the recorder is important to me. The recorder has no build-in tex-to-speech, so the only information it can speak is "canned" speech such as menu options and pre-existing folder names. Even so, the machine is way ahead of most devices for nonvisual access. The menus have selectable speech rates and volume settings and can be silenced if you don't want to hear them at all.

Recording is a snap. Just choose from one of the five available "dictation" folders and hit the Record button. Pressing Record repeatedly toggles between record and pause on the same audio file. Each time you hit the Stop button and begin a new recording with the Record button, a new file is created.

The recorder comes with a software CD that lets you easily move files between the recorder and your PC. You can subscribe to podcasts in this software and have those podcasts automatically grabbed from the Internet and loaded to your recorder when you attach the recorder to your PC via the USB port. There is also compatibility with audible.com though I have not tried that feature.

Windows Media Player recognizes the Olympus DS-50 as a media device, so you can load even protected audio content to the recorder.

This little recorder is a remarkably flexible device, and I do not have time here to describe all the nicities that contribute to its overall value. If I have one concern with my particular unit, it would be that I don't seem to get a whole lot of usage time out of a set of NiMH batteries, and I find that when the batteries go low, I get a beep and the unit immediately shuts off. I am hoping that the firmware update I retrieved from www.startstop.com may address this issue, but I have not seen how low battery conditions work out since loading the update. I can say that, if the recorder dies while recording, it tends to do a good job of closing the file that was being recorded so that you don't lose your existing data.

Quick and reliable service [Posted on 2008-02-02]
The item purchased was delivered promptly after ordering and delivered in perfect condition. The seller reacted quickly to written request by e-mail. The item fully lived up to expectations as described in sellers description.

Excellent Product [Posted on 2008-04-29]
You can pick up a rat's whisper with this kit. The case could be better, but we're not reviewing that.

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