I want a cheap digital audio recorder to record voice. I want to be able to record as I walk and work, so I guess it must have an external microphone. Then I want to feed the recordings into a computer so it needs pc connection. Then I want to feed those recordings into voice recognition software so I guess they need to be of an adequate standard. (Dragon Naturally Speaking). It will hopefully turn them into text for me so's I've got, in effect, a portable dictaphone. I hate battery hassles and expense so preferably it should have either rechargeable AAA's or be chargeable like a cellphone. NOW: my research finds all kinds of European and Japanese made voice recorders at prices over $100, sometimes well over, multiples of $100. And they have RAM of sometimes as low as 256M. True. Sometimes they don't connect with a pc. Sometimes they don't have an external mike. And so on. BUT: on eBay I can any day find long listings of very cheap voice recorders (as low as $25) which have RAM up to 4Gig, visual displays up to 2", pc USB connection, inbuilt radio sometimes (!), phone connection sometimes for direct phone recording, and so on.... Seems too good to be true. Are they any good? Does anyone have any experience of them? I'd imagine that if they're any good it'd be tantamount to a total revolution in the audio recorder world, as big as the advent of transistor radios back when. And yet I don't hear or see any excitement in the streets, in the shops, the magazines, etc... If it's a revolution no one seems to care. The European/Japanese stuff is still being offered for sale. Is this because it is such a small field - voice recording (incidentally they impinge on mp3 players, too, because they are mp3 players as well) - or is it because they are just rubbish? Of course they're so cheap I could order one and find out for myself, just take less than a $100 and about a week's wait and I'll probably finish up doing that. But it's even easier to ask the question on my favorite forum. regards, ab
They are probably made in China. I would not trust a chinese made device without a name brand stamp on it. There is an industry that builds knock-off from rejected parts. These inferior products are sold from companies that change their name every month or so. They could care less if they don't work. You will never get your money back. The ploy is S&H will be another $25. You pay $50 you lose money even if you if you return it because you will still have to pay S&H again on top of shipping it back. There is no reason a quality digital recorder couldn't sell for $25 on ebay. SRAM is dirt cheap, as long as the recorder does not amply the sound and will take a STD mic $25 is a fair price. Check for range and sample rates if you want quality. You do not need audio quality. The digital format is far more important. Do not assume the recorder will save the audio in a format usable to you. You need to check that out. You can use an analog recorder and capture the audio. It is a bit more work but you can trust all the technology. How do you find Dragon Naturally Speaking? Software was always the problem with dictation. Does it read the file or can it listen to the sound card? If it just listens, use an analog recorder.
You're right. Made in China. Sold out of Hong Kong, which is a bit different to mainland China, but not much because quite often the products Hong Kong sells are made in mainland China. You're right about fly by nights and reject parts, too. But don't forget there's another very large industry that sells identical parts to those in 'quality' Western products (i.e., they use parts made in Asia) in locally produced products at a fraction of the price. This particular vendor has 3,600 positive feedback comments from purchasers during his vending time on eBay. I think he's trustworthy. The mailing cost is $14 Australian and the price of the item is $27. They publish this spec sheet: Support mp3,wma,wmv,asf,wav,mtv,amv format Full speed usb 2.0 Built-in 4GB flash memory Built-in voice recorder, can record up to 1120 hours Super Slim 7mm Screen:128x96 pixels 1.8-inch TFT Screen 65K Colour OLED Display Size:89x40x7mm Weight:40g Synchronous lyric display Built-in FM radio Supports JPEG/BMP/JIF photo Supports MTV/AMV video(convert tool in the driver cd is needed) Supports Tel-book / E-book mode 6 playing mode: Normal; Repeat one; Repeat Folder; Repeat all; Random; Intro 7 preset EQ : normal,rock,pop,classic,soft,jazz,DBB Folder support Support multi language display : English,German,French,Italian,Spanish,Swedish,Czech,Dutch,Portuguese,Denmark,Polish,Simplified Chinese,Traditional Chinese,Japanese,Russian,Turkish,Korean Rechargable built-in Li-ion battery, 6 hours max after fully charged Supported systems: Windows 98/SE/ME/2K/XP, Max OS 10, Linux 2.4.2 RoHS, CE, FCC compliance It's got me so intrigued I've ordered one just to see what it is all about. Dragon was good, I found. I spent a week or two, on and off, with it and haven't done anything for months. It was learning my voice and I was learning all the extra little tricks. I got good text out of it. And I didn't have any expensive mic either. The idea of these digital recorders is that they've no moving parts and that's the extra 'noise' and 'white sound' that usually buggers up recordings and makes it hard for Dragon to comprehend them. So I'm hoping for good results. I don't know if it'll read a file, offhand, but I can't see that being a problem. I can always play the file and Dragon will 'hear' that. Or that's what I'm expecting, anyway. I'm expecting even to be able to play it on the computer at the same time as Dragon is running and 'hearing' it. That works with other things. Music and Sound Forge for instance. That way there'll be no extraneous noise whatever, except, of course, what I introduced at the time I recorded (street noise and such). Drastic differences in price are nothing new, I guess everyone knows. I experienced it totally first hand myself. I imported some items from China that cost me - including freight - one third of what they were selling for in Australia. Unfortunately I wasn't the only one and the price quickly dove down. Well I think the same thing might happen with voice recorders. Thanks to all for their input. regards, ab
Let us know how it turns out. I am curious as to how accurate the recognition is. You may want to lower the bit rate on your recording. 4 gb is not a great deal of space. OCR prefers low res pics I bet that is the same for voice. Quality voive recordings is only 50 BR. I think telephones are less than that. At 20-30 BR 4 gs is a good deal of memory.
Well here's an update, guys, and time for some of you to fall about laughing. The one I started off talking about I won at eBay for $31 all up. and it never arrived. That mob went out of business, disappeared from eBay completely. (After 3000 successfull deals, just when I come along!). Lost my money, and my time. So I got another one. At $80. With similar specs. I'll publish them if anyone cares. It is now broken. The input for the external button mic doesn't work. the mic still works - it works in my pc - but not in the device. The device still works on its internal mic. It has a sampling rate of only 8kHz. They advertise it as having a high quality recording ability with a data rate of 128kbsp. But its all a bit of a con, I reckon. It goes like this: It records standard at 8khz and 4bits, giving 32kbps. Mono. Then the next level it does in stereo, even though it can only handle mono input. So it writes this as: 8kHz @ 4bits on each channel = 64kbps. But it is 32kbps of pure rubbish. Redundant data. And then it has the 'highest level' at 128kbps. But this is because it has a bit depth of 16bits. But god knows what it is writing in those 16 bits because it still only has a rate of 8kpbs. That 'highest level' it writes in ACT format so that's the level that gives you the longest play time, hours and hours in theory, if your external mic still works. The recognition, after I massaged the files to suit Dragon, was not good. It could perhaps be better if I trained Dragon more. The problem is that training Dragon on one mic is not the same as training on another. Ideally you train Dragon with the recorder that is going to be used to dictate to it. So this is not a very definitive report for you all. Woolly and unfinished, maybe good things could still be done with these recorders, I'm not sure yet. But I posted because I thought the cynics there might get a good laugh and a few 'I told you so' things out of it. ab
