Olympus WS-300M 256 MB Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player

As a marketer doing a lot of research interviews, customer feedback, PR work, and the like, my share of recording interviews has made me all to familiar with botched recording, bad microphones, tinny sound, etc. After years of trying different audio recorders, I was left wondering if there was such a thing as good audio quality without shelling out some big bucks.

Finally, fed up after burning the midnight oil on trying to decipher one too many bad recordings, I decided to give it another go, and did a little homework. I relied heavily on the reviews in David Battino's blogs (he writes for O'Reilly and you can find him with a simple web search) and bought the Olympus DS-2...wow, what a change. The only drawback for my purposes was that the 64 MB memory was on the low side for storing long interviews.

Enter the WS-300m series, with 256 MB memory for almost the same price! What's not to love? The built in microphone is amazing (as good or better than the already impressive DS-2), managing files went from easy to easier, it's even smaller, even lighter, and this one uses one AAA battery to spare you from having yet one more electronic to charge.

Separate the battery compartment from the main section and *voila* A built-in USB connector plugs your WS-300m directly into your computer, with no extra cables to worry about. I carry mine with me all the time and have started using it for things like diary and memos, memorization, and jotting down ideas for new material.

I only wish this was around years ago.

Out of the box this pocketsize digital voice recorder by Olympus lets you record over 8 hours of material, however you can tweak things to get more juice out of it. Still, if you want to record interviews (for instance) for later semi-professional use (or even re-use, as in the case of an audio podcast) this little one MORE than does the trick. And when you are ready, just plug it into a USB port in your computer and pull the audio files from it much like you would from any other portable storage device.

So far, I've only encountered one "issue" with it (and it's not something you cannot circumvent easily by throwing the files at a file conversion utility). It generates WMA files for every audio track it creates. Since I could care less about these Microsoft audio formats (I prefer my audio tracks to be in MP3 or AAC formats), I ended up tossing the files into iTunes, which did a nice job of converting them back into MP3s. Other than this minor inconvenience, getting this d.v. recorder/player has been nothing but joy!

Update (02/26/2007): I have gotten asked this question a couple of times, so I am posting in here how you go about converting the WMA files to MP3s using iTunes.

1) You drag the files and drop them (literally inside iTunes).

2) You get a screen saying "One or more of the songs you are adding to iTunes... are in the WMA format. iTunes will automatically conver them to the MP3 format so that they can be added to your iTunes library."

3) Past that point, they become available through your library as MP3 files.

Buy Olympus WS-300M 256 MB Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player Now

SMALL size

mp3 playback

Roomy memory

Good quality

Easy to use

Compatible with MAC

No additional wire but built in USB port

Read Best Reviews of Olympus WS-300M 256 MB Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player Here

I'm quite happy with this little recorder and I do mean little. It's amazing how so much functionality can be included in a device this size. The sound quality is very good when recording voices. The recorder's design makes setting functions easy and intuitive. I especially like the integrated USB plug that can be used to upload the sound files to a computer. You simply separate the battery housing from remainder of the case to expose the USB plug.

Even though the recorder is not really intended for it, I also tried recording music but found the results less than satisfying. It is possible to use a higher quality external microphone, but I have not done that yet.

So far, my impression is that it uses extremely little battery power. I have been amazed how long it goes on a charged battery.

The recorder does not come with a carrying case, or even a lanyard to allow hanging it around your neck, so you'll have to be creative to use it and store it securely.

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First of all, this is a fine music player. The "WOW" and bass enhancements add to inherently good sound quality. There's even a 5-band equalizer. If that's your main use for the unit, though, it might be better to spend a little more money on the WS-320M with four times as much memory. Loading music into the unit couldn't be simpler. Just plug it into a USB port and copy your MP3 and WMA files to its Music folder. The tiny display shows all the song titles, so you can select what you want to hear--or choose to play everything or just the contents of one folder. It will hold any type of file, not just those it understands, so you can use it to transfer data from one PC to another.

For recording, there are several choices of quality. At the lowest quality setting, it will hold 68 hours, so the memory capacity is quite sufficient. Also you can select whether to record at full sensitivity or to cut it back and talk close to the mic for noise reduction. At maximum sensitivity I have gotten excellent recordings of bird calls, even with birds more than 100 feet away. The recording are stored in WMA format. They can be reviewed on the unit itself or copied to a PC for editing and enhancement.

It does not come with a carrying case. I found a leather glasses case with padding inside, a velcro flap, and a sturdy pocket clip. This has proved to be an ideal case. If you wear glasses, you probably have one of these lying around. The WS-300M is so small that the case will hold the earphones, too, and a couple of extra batteries, probably even a small external microphone.

Olympus seems to have incorporated just about every possible feature into a very small case, an amazing feat of engineering. I really can't think of anything not to like about this device.