Category: Geeks r Us
I found out about the digital recorders a few months ago at a round table discussion at the local community college. I was representing the Lions Club when a friend of mine showed me this tiny protable device to record meetings. He said that the one he's using cannot be hooked up to the computer but that there were other brands out there. I bought a Olympus Digital Wave recorder and even though he told me it's not accessible, I memorized all the functions of the thing.
It's portable, light weight and mine can record up to 16 hrs of lecture. For a college student this'll mean being able to record almost a week's worth of notes (depending on the length of lectures as not all lectures are one hour long.).
I tested the thing out last night at a meeting and after I came home and downloaded the recordings, I then took a hour or so doing notes by hand as one of the members coulndn't make it and needed a copy of the minutes. I was able to do my notes at my own pace without the worry or risk of missing something while typing and worrying that I didn't get everything accurate.
The downside to this player is that when you download and play the tracks, it sounds a little muffled. But other then that I had no problems with the thing whats so ever. It was a life saver for me because my pacmate was on the charger and I'm not great writing out notes by hand as I cannot read my own cursive. The nice thing about this player is that you can create sub folders in folders A, B, C, and S and name them prior to your meeting while in the recorder's program on the computer. There is a way to create files and rename them before recording which is another plus. And that also means no need for having to buy extra blank tapes/mini tapes to record.
So has anyone used something like this? Which brand are you using? Do you find that these kinds of devices are useful?
To me they are useful, because you can rewind, or fast forward to a part of a lecture/meeting you missed. A nicer option to have then having a note taker in class/meeting writing your notes for you. The mic on my player is sensitive enough where the speaker was speaking low and I still managed to hear her clearly and loud enough.
Whoops, I ment the recorders are nicer to have then having a note taker take your notes for you. And you can go as fast or slow as you want to in play back mode.
i use a minidisc recorder, but it's basically the same as digital. i love it.
I personally don't want to waste the time re-listening to a lecture that was many times boring the first time. I'd just rather take notes and be done with it, but hey, if it works for you, have at it.
Frequency: What features does your mini disc recorder have?
Jamesk: Understandable. But for college/university students taking their own notes, it is always great to have a back up during lectures. I have photographic memory where I pay attention to the lectures. If I missed something in my notes while studying, I go back to the recording and fast forward to the area(s) I missed.
oh don't go for mini disc. go for an Iriver h100 or h 300 series mp3 player, it's got a built in recorder and you can use rock box on it which is free software that provides accessibility and then drag and drop the files to your computer with the USB port.
i use my MPower's recording feature wich is very good since you can use an external mic with it.
yeah, you can do that with the I river as well.
Being an audiophyle, I don't like the quality of the mp3 player's recording abilities. The minidisk recorder records in several formats depending on how much space you want saved. I use an archos jukebox recorder 80. No, that's not what it originally was. I threw an 80GB hd in there.
yeah, that works fine too. I don't like atrack3 with mini disc but the new hd mini discs are impressive. Data dump would be an issue still though because with most of them, you need to do a real time transfer and that's a drag. If you could record mp3 at 320 kpbs though, you won't get that annoying high frequency flutter and other audio compression related issues nearly as much.
can you get the h100 and h300? I thought those were older units. anyone working on a rockbox port for the h10 series?
I've seen both on amazon but I can't justify the price for a secondhand unit which has no warranty.
rockbox has ports for new models, including the ipod video.
If you need to read daisy books for school, and you have a good relationship with rehab, why not consider having the purchase a ptr2 for you? I love mine, and I find it useful. I know there is a lot of contraversy surrounding this device, and a lot of people think the idea of it is stupid, but it does a very god lecture quality recording and a 1 gig cf card will give you about 15 hours recording at 128 kbps. Not to mention that the new ditigal rfb&d books are amazing in comparison to the four track. Its a bit bigger than the digital recorders, but every function talks, and it allows you to do quite a bit. I usually take notes with a braille note at the same time, and put the braille note under the table so the keys don't get into the recording as much. I use the recordings in case i screw up on the braille note. I certainly don't like using just the recording, but I've found this device pretty good.
The manual for the ptr2 is much improved over that of the ptr1. I pretty much learned it on my own because so much of the ptr1 manual was unclear. the ptr2 has better design and recording quality.
Hope this helps,
Shawn
i use a sony digital recorder. the only thing i hate is when i download the softwhere. there are errors on the CD. other than that, i can hock it to my computer and it transcribes stuff into text.