I want to get a personal portable voice recorder, to record a series of lectures.
I need to record several hours at a time, and then I want to transfer/keep the recording(s) permanently to cassette later after each lecture.
I tried a small digital recorder, and it worked ok but only in its High quality mode which only lasted 90 minutes.
90 minutes is not long enough, and since it is digital, there was no way to put in a new cassette(since it doesnt use cassettes) to record some more. The LP long playing mode, which lasts for 6 hours, was very poor quality.
I dont care what kind it is, micro cassette, reg cassette, or digital, whatever, as long as it is high quality and I can keep or transfer the recordings to a permanent cassette later.
Does anyone know of any good audio recorders?
Audio recording has been around for over 40 years, isnt there any good ones out there?
Minidiscs. The model recorder I have is a few years old, and on mono, you get double the length of whatever minidisc you’re using…in my case 160 mins (you can buy 80 min minidiscs pretty much anywhere. Newer models allow you to record more, at least that’s my understanding. They’re designed to record MP3s from your computer, so I can’t say for sure if any have external mic jacks…but it’d be a good place to start.
www.minidisc.org is a great place to go for info, specifically http://www.minidisc.org/portable_table.html
look for MDLP, the long playing compatible MDs
and it looks like some of the MDLP recorders have external mic jacks, and it allows you to record 4 times or more on an 80 min blank…one mentioned over 5 hours on one minidisc.
so we have a winner, i think…i just can’t choose you a specific model
The Jukebox Multimedia is primarily a video and MP3 player but has a built in microphone that encodes directly to MP3 to its built in 20 Gig HD, so it will record about 1000 hours.
You might not be willing to shell out about $250 if all you need is an audio recorder though.
Before it got stolen, I had a great little MP3 player that also had a really nice built in voice recorder. It’s tiny and easy to transport in your pocket. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat12085&type=page&_requestid=141021
The one I had was just 128MB and it had about 9 hrs of record time. I used it for some interview assignments and such and it was great for me. I just put it on the desk and let it go while we talked. If you don’t want to spend quite as much, even the 64MB should work just fine. I don’t know a whole lot about transferring it to cassette, though I do know that there is software and equipment out there that will do it. Hope you find something that works for you.
I’ll heartily second the minidisc recommendation. I’m a journalist and use my Sony Minidisc recorder to record interviews, meetings, and conferences I attend. ubermensch is right that new models allow you to record 320 minutes of stereo on a single disc. The quality is slightly lower at the longer recording lengths, but for spoken voice (as opposed to music) it is plenty good.
Probably the most important thing to remember is that the quality of your microphone is critical. I bought the recorder for about $135 (refurbed on eBay), but spent $150 for a stereo mike.
Look here here for MD recorders. Sony and Sharp are the leading makers. The main difference seems to be that Sharp units allow you to adjust the recording level on the fly; the Sonys make you set the level before you start. But for your purposes, using auto level control will probably be the norm. So whatever unit you can afford from either manufacturer will be fine. Make sure you pick one with a mike input.
Look here for mikes. I bought the SP-SPSM-4 on this page, and am very happy with it. You definitely want a cardiod, not an omni. The Sound Professionals site has useful information about the different types of mikes under the Technical Information FAQs.
The only downside to MD recording is that the only way you can transfer the recording to another format is via the analog headphone output of the recorder in real time. You can’t transfer digital to digital, or faster than the actual length of the recording. It’s a bit of a pain, but it hasn’t been a big issue for me, and doesn’t look like it will be a major issue for what you want to do.
Don’t be fooled by this NetMD stuff: it allows you to record digitally from your computer to the MD recorder via a USB cable, which is fine if you want to play your tunes on your MD. But you can’t go the other way–from the MD to the computer–except via the analog headset jack.
I guarantee you will love your minidisc. Good luck.
BTW, in case it’s not obvious, the advantage of MD over a digital recorder like costumegoddess has mentioned is that when you’ve made a recording on an MD, you can pull the disc out and put it on the shelf until you need it. When the digital recorder fills up you have to transfer the recording to the computer before you can record some more.
It’s probably quick and easy, but with an MD you don’t have to worry about how much time you have left or keeping your computer (or another storage medium) handy. You can carry dozens of hours of recording time in your pocket.