Olympus Digital Voice Recorder (DS50)

I bought this recorder to replace my aging portable cassette recorder. I was astounded by the compact size of the unit. It's smaller and lighter in weight than even my microcassette recorder, but there is a whole range of recording quality settings, both monaural and stereo. There is a monaural microphone build right into the recorder, and this gives quite nice sound. The included external stereo microphone can be mounted right to the top of the recorder or connected at a distance using the included extension cable with built-in recording on/off switch and pocket clip. The stereo microphone is a bit heavy on the treble and lacking on the bass, but it's sensitive and works fine for a variety of purposes.

I am totally blind, so nonvisual access to the recorder is important to me. The recorder has no build-in tex-to-speech, so the only information it can speak is "canned" speech such as menu options and pre-existing folder names. Even so, the machine is way ahead of...Read more

You can't brag too much about this recorder-it should get an award. I took it to the jungle to record background jungle sounds, waterfalls, and frogs. The quality of sound was amazing. And it is easy to use. The battery seems to last forever.

I cannot say enough about the DS-50. As a reporter, it's always dangerous to rely on recorder of any kind. Even if the recording comes out, often you are seated in the audience of a meeting where people are not speaking through microphones and soft speakers just aren't recordable. With this device, if you set it on HQ Stereo and switch the microphone to Lecture, you can hear even the softest speakers across the room and playback through headphones is extraordinary.
The controls are simple and easy to learn and the backlit screen is easy to read. Overall, the design of the recorder is great, with the button placement very easy to learn.
The remote attachment is also a wonderful feature. For meetings I have to take notes and I can safely place the recorder in my pocket and run the stereo microphone on the remote wire to my lapel and control the starts and stops from there.
The control on the remote overrides the Hold button on the recorder, so you don't have to...Read more