Audio Recording

We hate MiniDisc recorders. But we use them. The screens are impossible to read (tiny text, and with bad or no backlighting). The insane tiny controls (which are like a very lousy joystick, and smaller than your thumbprint) drive everyone nuts. You can't find the recording levels because they are buried about four menu levels down -- and yes, you must use that wonderful joystick control to get there.

Then it comes time to transfer your audio to a computer so you can edit it. Ha! The new Sony software (SonicStage 3.2) is sure better than the previous versions, but that's like saying the current version of battery acid tastes better than the old versions.

In short, MiniDisc bites.

So last week I was at the Florida Times-Union, in Jacksonville, Fla., and one of the photojournalists there showed me this Olympus voice recorder.

Oh, YEAH! Check out that built-in USB-2 connector!

The photog had a professional mic jacked into the unit, and with headphones, the playback sounded great. The only thing I didn't try was editing it.

I have a tiny IC recorder that I always use for interviews, but even with a good mic attached, it does not produce audio quality that can be used on the Web. I guess the compression it uses to record to the memory card (in that case) is too much, and so the quality is too low. It's great for just checking quotes for myself, but you can't post the audio files.

Another multimedia journalist told me that sometimes the external mic does not actually override (or shut down) the built-in mic on these small solid-state recorders. That means you get a lot of unwanted noise, and again, you can't publish the audio you get.

So ... I'm gonna get one of these little ones and try it out. Maybe next year I can kiss the MiniDisc goodbye!