Portable Audio Recorder mainly for lectures

[jhelsas]

Hello guys,
 
    I was searching for a audio recorder for using mainly in lectures and conferences, but that I could also use, but it's not priority, to record music pratice sections. My budget was something near US$ 200 but could stretch up to US$ 300 if it's realy worth it.
 
    What I wanted was a recorder with good mic that records with better quality than mp3, and in this price-range I was some that recorderd with wav 24/96, but my problem is that most recorders that I saw annouced I noticed people complaining about usability on lectures, suposely  it would have problems  recording in noisy/not ideal enviroment. Also usualy a lot of complaints about battery, I would be happy with 5h, but something with 20h @ 16/44.1 would me more than enough.
 
    My ideas was something like the following:
 
1) http://www.amazon.com/Zoom-H2N-H2n-Handy-Recorder/dp/B005CQ2ZY6/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pdT1_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3MWI0ST58OHE8&colid=A9KDVS9UC11D
 
2) http://www.amazon.com/Sony-PCMM10-B-PCM-M10-Black/dp/B002R56C4O/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&coliid=IRWN824DMHP3N&colid=A9KDVS9UC11D
 
3) http://www.amazon.com/Tascam-DR2D-Portable-Digital-Recorder/dp/B003838PHQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t
 
 
  Would any of the above be appropriate for my needs?
 
  Any other recomendations are much appreciated
 
thanks in advance

 

[JK1]

For lectures, the $66(on Amazon) Olympus WS802 seems like the best value.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-WS-802-Voice-Recorder/dp/B006ZW4H4C/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339466461&sr=1-1&keywords=WS-802
 
The Zoom and Tascam get much shorter battery life, and don't have the voice recording features. They are also much bulkier.
 
When you need to do higher  quality music recording, those other recorders may make sense. I don't have the WS802 yet, however after studying a number of models of voice recorders, it seems to me to be the best value. The WS802 might even be decent enough at recording music as well.
 
You can download the manual for the WS-802 on the Olympus website. I read through the manual a few times. This recorder has so many features!

 

[jhelsas]

Quote:

For lectures, the $66(on Amazon) Olympus WS802 seems like the best value.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-WS-802-Voice-Recorder/dp/B006ZW4H4C/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339466461&sr=1-1&keywords=WS-802
 
The Zoom and Tascam get much shorter battery life, and don't have the voice recording features. They are also much bulkier.
 
When you need to do higher  quality music recording, those other recorders may make sense. I don't have the WS802 yet, however after studying a number of models of voice recorders, it seems to me to be the best value. The WS802 might even be decent enough at recording music as well.
 
You can download the manual for the WS-802 on the Olympus website. I read through the manual a few times. This recorder has so many features!

 
Thanks for the recomendation, I would buy it in Ireland, but I couldn't find it in amazon.co.uk, the closest thing I found was this one:
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Olympus-WS-812-Digital-Recorder-4GB/dp/B006YB9ZAK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339521040&sr=8-1
 
Are they too much diferent or would it still fill my needs as would the WS-802?

 

[JK1]

It seems like the WS-812 and WS-802 might be exactly the same, except perhaps for a volume limiter or some other things needed for the EU market(different choice of languages for the menus)? I tried to find out the difference and couldn't find it. They look identical. 

 

[LFF]

If you are simply going to use it for lecture, just get a Clip+.
 
If high fidelity is important, you can't go wrong with a Zoom H4n.

 

[JK1]

The Clip+ sucks as a recorder. It is a great player though. The zoom recorders are bulkier, more expensive, and lack the voice recording features of the WS-802.

 

[JK1]

A writeup of the WS-802 and WS-803.
 
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/indepth/olympus/announcements/new-olympus-ws-802-and-ws-803-portable-digital-recorders

 

[jhelsas]

Thank you guys, you helped a lot
 
I'll probably buy a olympus for recording lectures, and latter on the road I buy something proper for recording music, as you have suggested, something like a zoon H4n or alike.
 
I've found this B&H review, they indeed seem great, but my question is if I would pay extra taxes in sending from B&H to ireland or not.
 
In amazon.co.uk the WS-812 is 71 pounds, which corresponds to US$ 110, which is about the close to US$ 128 which would be the price of the WS-802 from B&H(with us taxes).
 
Anyway, I've sent an email to Olympus US about them, this should be clarified soon enough.
 
Thanks everybody, i'll keep in touch
 
Edit:
 
I have just read the email from Olympus, it seems that it would be just the language menu, I but I asked about the limiter, though I hope there is none I would like to know if in fact they confirm so.
 
Also, even if there is some kind of limiter, would it be bothersome?
I mean, I usualy listen to music on the go with my sansa fuze and my HF5, and the volume is between 20% and 40% almost all the time, so I don't use all the volume the clip have, at least not for the HF5.

 

[JK1]

I have no idea if you would need to pay customs duties or not if you buy from B&H. I guess you could try e-mailing B&H, however they may tell you they don't know.
 
I also have a Fuze. On the Fuze you can get around the volume limiter by not choosing Europe as the region. On some players like those by Sony, the ones sold in Europe can't get around the volume limits. I wonder if that is also the case for the WS-812.  I guess the EU volume limits are more of a factor if you use less efficient earphones or headphones. If you use those that are efficient, I guess the EU volume limits probably shouldn't be a problem. The HF5 has decent sensitivity at 105 db/mw. I guess if you had an earphone that was 96db/mw or less it might be much more of a factor?

 

[jhelsas]

Quote:

I have no idea if you would need to pay customs duties or not if you buy from B&H. I guess you could try e-mailing B&H, however they may tell you they don't know.
 
I also have a Fuze. On the Fuze you can get around the volume limiter by not choosing Europe as the region. On some players like those by Sony, the ones sold in Europe can't get around the volume limits. I wonder if that is also the case for the WS-812.  I guess the EU volume limits are more of a factor if you use less efficient earphones or headphones. If you use those that are efficient, I guess the EU volume limits probably shouldn't be a problem. The HF5 has decent sensitivity at 105 db/mw. I guess if you had an earphone that was 96db/mw or less it might be much more of a factor?

 In the case I bought the Fuze on the US, so it shouldn't have any limiter, I give the example so to give an idea at which volume I normaly hear music.
 
Olympus US recomended that I tried to contact Olympus UK for the information on the WS-812, and that's what I'm going to do now.

 

[LFF]

Quote:

The Clip+ sucks as a recorder. It is a great player though. The zoom recorders are bulkier, more expensive, and lack the voice recording features of the WS-802.

I used my Clip+ for lectures/meetings all the time and found it to work well...especially for the price and the fact it's a good music player.

 

[JK1]

I did try recording with the Clip+ and Fuze and found that if the speaker's mouth is more than around 3 feet away from the player, the recording is very noisy. Some have gotten usable recordings by clipping the Clip+ to the speaker's shirt. The Clip+ can't record to card memory though, and only records in WAV(I seem to recall 384 kbps?). It's mic is cheap and poor quality, and there is no mic jack. The Clip+ also lacks features like settable voice activation, voice balancer, noise reduction, being able to set the machine for the type of recording(lecture or conference), which the WS-802 has. The WS-802 allows recording to card memory or main memory, and one can choose mp3, wma, or wav, and has several choices for bitrates. The WS-802 uses a AAA battery, so one can swap it when battery power gets low. It will use an nimh rechargeable, and even charge an nimh rechargeable through it usb port. i think it gets around 27 hours of battery life for recording or playback through headphones. It has a built in speaker, however the speaker sound quality isn't great. The WS-802 has several choices for fast or slow playback with pitch correction. It also has a blank skip function to skip playing blank spaces in recordings. I love the Clip+ as a player, but hate using it as a recorder.
 
 
The volume limiter on the Fuze and Clip+ is in the firmware, and only comes into play when when chooses Europe as the region. Even if someone buys one of those in Europe, it they  set the region on the player to something other than Europe, the sound limiter doesn't go into effect. They may need to set it to rest of the world though in order for the radio to work properly. The volume limiter on EU sold Sony players is different. It seems like it can't be bypassed.