Olympus Voice Recorder and MP3 Player.
Olympus WS320M Digital Voice Recorder and MP3 Player:
I find it Ideal for my purposes (grabbling sound bytes and sounds from interviews and assignments). I need to to travel light, but needed good sound quality and lots of recording time. With its 1GB internal memory the Olympus WS320M allows you to store up to 480 music tracks and has over 277 hours of recording time. Another reason I chose this one is that runs on a single AAA battery. The other feature that is cool is that you don't need a USB cable to download the sounds on to your computer...the Olympus WS320M pulls apart into two pieces, one with a USP connector, so you just literally plug it in !
I have made a conscious decision to purchase things that run on either AA or AAA batteries. In fact all the battery powered accessory items that I carry including my flashlight, alarm clock,, my Canon 580EX, all run on AA or AAA batteries. That way I am never in a situation where any of my electronic stuff is inoperable. At worst I can pull batteries out of one device to power up another, but I have charged spares ready to go because I carry the Panasonic charger See my battery and charger page here Of course, my camera bodies and computer) run proprietary batteries and there is no way around that.
I wear it around my neck while I am in the field, ready to capture sounds whenever the need arises.
If you
buy it here Olympus
WS320M Digital Voice Recorder
----Important---
Adorama has the new version the Olympus WS-321M with 2 gigs and a lower price,
only $147...If I were buying it today, I would get it at Adorama...click my
Adorama link above, then search for Olympus voice recorder WS-321M
Anyway, the Olympus WS320M is a great device for capturing sounds and voices while I am working. OK, now I know someone is going to email me and say that my Canon Mark II has a voice recorder feature which I could use instead....I know, I know.....but I find the camera based recorder just too difficult and awkward to use for interviews.
