[Druen]

Hi!

I am searching for a good quality mp3 player, which also has a good voice-recording feature (primarily for interviews, but some times for recording lectures to).

Any players you can recommend?

What about buying an external mic? What should I look for buying one of those?

I have been looking on Creative's Zen Micro, but it only has a 5gb HD and can only record in WAV. This two things added up, if I am right, must do that the possible recording time is not that long. (Any idea how much HD-space 1min recording in WAV-format takes?)

Thx for the help in advance….

 

[dj_mocok]

I posted similar question awhile ago, thinking to get an MP3 player with good recording capability, but was directed towards HiMD recording unit.

Purchased them along with a couple of mics, I have to tell you, the sound quality is top notch. I am very very satisfied with the result of recordings.

Don't think you can beat HiMD format in terms of recordings.

 

[YamiTenshi]

Another vote for an mindisc/himd player. Do a search and you're find a lot of info about them.

 

[LFC_SL]

depends how much cash...a dictation machine is cheap, but really not for lectures, more interviews

but the Hi-MD with a dedicated mic....wow. I'm v happy. Remember the 1gb discs are cheap..but you say "only 5gb" for the micro, so how much space do you need?

 

[Druen]

Thx for all the answers

However I don't think I will buy the HiMD product - it looks very nice, but I think that 1gb is to little (not for recording, but for having music files...)

I read on sonys website that 1gb could have 17 hours recoded speach (in mp3 128 kps) - that is surely enough for me.

My questionen is, once again, does anybody know how long the possibly recordingen time for the zen micro is? (my problem is that it only record in wav....)

 

[Kameleon]

Is it just the ihp-120/140 that have inbuilt mics or do the newer iriver players have it too?

 

[PodMan]

I've used the iRiver H320 to record. it has very good mic quality for recording classroom lectures. I could be sitting in the back or the front and the mic is sensitive enough to record the speaker pretty well. the internal mic is much better than the zen micro's mic which is pretty weak. The H320 also directly records to mp3 and you can just drag the files out via windows explorer like any other drive.

 

[YamiTenshi]

One of the problems I've heard of about using the internal mic is that it can pick up the sound of the harddrive spinning. I've never tried it myself but it's something to keep in mind.

If you're interested in buying a mic try asking these guys . They seem to know what they're talking about.

 

[CSMR]

The thing is that minidisc recorders in general have internal microphone preamps while no standard HD player does as far as I know. I use an HD player with external preamp. That would be fine for interviews maybe but too clumsy for lectures.

 

[Oga]

You don't need to spend that much or deal with discs/hard drives at all for voice recording. A handful of top-quality flash MP3 players have both onbaord mic and line in capabilities. I use the Cowon IAudio U2 for this purpose and am very happy with it.

If you have a PPC PDA (such as the Imate Jam for example) some simple software such as Resco Audo Recorder and a large SD card or MMC card are all you need. That rolls it all into one device for you.

I'd recommend those routes rather than getting lost in the Sony/Minidisc maze or spending money on a hard drive based device.