Olympus DM-10 recorder

[fortissimo]

I know absolutely nothing about recording equipment, but I've been looking into getting equipment such as a minidisc recorder to start recording myself in practice. My brother, a cellist, recently bought a product that is really meant to be a voice recorder for lectures and such, the Olympus DM-10, but he uses it for recording himself on cello and claims it works just fine. It stores everything electronically in its memory - no tapes or discs or anything. It's very compact and would be easier to deal with and transfer onto the computer than a minidisc recorder (it comes with USB cable and software to transfer from the device to the computer).

However, I'm not so sure about the quality of this device. I haven't been able to test it for myself, so I really have no idea. The one thing that caught my attention, though, when looking at the specs, is that the frequency response is up to 8,000 Hz, while those for a typical minidisc recorder go up to about 20,000 Hz apparently. I'm not an expert on that type of stuff, so I don't really know if that's a significant difference or not, considering that the higher frequencies are less audible and usually cut out with MP3 compression without changing the sound too much. The sampling rate is the normal 44.1 kHz.

Basically, my quesion is if this would be acceptable as a recorder for amateur use? Or would I be much better off getting a Sharp minidisc recorder? Please pardon my ignorance!

[ This Message was edited by: fortissimo on 2004-06-21 23:21 ]

[FatPauly]

I think the real question is whether capturing practices is the only application you want this for or not. It looks like the bottom of the recording spectrum, but should do a decent job of capturing a practice. Just don't hope to use the recordings for more serious or permanent work.

- Paul Artola
Ellicott City, Maryland