Olympus DS2000 Digital Voice Recorder

Digital is so much better, right? Well, this misstep from Olympus didn't sound any better at all than my Olympus analog (microcassette) recorder. There was a very noticeable hiss during playback, and in order to hear my recording without laying the speaker almost directly against my ear, I had to turn the volume up past the point of distortion. Consider the fact that I am a Pentecostal preacher, and you might get the idea. As loudly as I speak, I shouldn't have to turn the thing up so high. This wouldn't be bad for a $50 recorder, but at ($$$), this is just a couple steps below robbery! I used the highest quality mode, and both high and low mic sensitivity, but the results were just not acceptable. It was on its way back within 72 hours. I liked the size, weight and the features, but the poor playback, combined with the low-wattage speaker, killed this recorder for me, at least at it's retail price. It's one strong feature is that you can connect it directly to a PC (no need for a card reader), but again, that just wasn't enough to save it from the return process.

Olympus makes the best ANALOG recorders, by my ears, but digitally, they have left much to be desired. If you want to spend ($$$) on a digital recorder, I'd highly recommend the Sony ICD-MS1. Same price (the one without the voice recognition software), basically the same features (except direct PC connection), but much better sound, I mean very much better.

and is very good at it. I really like the VCVA feature. You can control the sensivity as well. Also the switch for dictation vs conference is very useful as well. Awesome/fast tech support. Had few questions about the software, and got them all answered in 5 mins.

The most important thing about digital voice recorders is: they should be easy to control and navigate. I must say DS-2000 is very easy to control and use.

Wish List:

It would be awesome if the software had the capability to export to mp3 format.

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