Sony ICD-SX700 Digital Voice Recorder with Voice Operated Recording

This little recorder rocks. There's a lot to say about it.

For my recording needs, it replaced an aging but awesome iRiver H120 (20 GB recorder capable of recording 44/16 or MP3, plus playback of many audio file types. I found nothing that would do everything the iRiver did, so I split the job up. Bought an iPod for listening to music and the Sony for recording.

My recording needs are smaller than my recording ego. I'd love a Marantz PMD 661, but have no way to justify it or the price. I needed a recorder to handle 1to 4-part vocal practices, with from 1-50 people, without having to pay a lot of attention to tweaking levels to get a quality recording. I wanted more than "recognizable," I wanted "listenable." The Sony got it right.

Sony did all that and surprised me with more flexibility than I expected. I had been debating between this and the Olympus LS-10. At the time I purchased, I was able to find the Sony online new for $70, versus the Olympus for $219. I downloaded the manuals, read a number of reviews, listened to sound samples, and even looked at some in audio editing software.

The real differences between this and the Olympus come from the product's target market: Sony aimed for digital voice recording, and Olympus aimed at music recording. But they overlap enough that comparisons are worth making:

(0) Both offer line-in or built-in mic recording; USB connection to a computer; 44/16 or MP3 recording (more later), high quality mics in stereo; battery operation; and tiny speakers useful for little more than basic monitoring. In each of these camps, one model or the other offers a little more versatility than the other. I believe it is these "little things" that make or break the choice over which is right for you.

(1) Sony's got 1 GB of RAM, which limits you to 90 minutes of CD quality (44.1/16) recording (if you choose one of the lossy formats like MP3 (192 or 128) or Sony's proprietary LPEC format, you'll get many hours more). There's no expansion option (c'mon, a MicroSD card slot would not have been out of the question). Olympus offers more high resolution, high bit rate formats, and comes with 2 GB built in with an SD card slot for more expansion. Score 1 for Olympus.

(2) If you use rechargeables, the Sony will recharge the AAA batteries via USB when connected, while the Olympus will not. The Oly's 12 hour on AA's mean you'll likely use an AC adaptor much of the time, like when transferring files to/from the PC. But the Olym does not include one. Worse, the Oly manual explicitly says DO NOT connect via USB while connected to AC power. WHAT? That's just goofy, and it sounds too easy to fry something important. Score 1 for Sony.

(3) Sony added a number of useful features geared toward "voice clarity" when recording, and when playing back, any combination of which can be turned on/off. Some are "recorded" with the signal, but others are playback-only. Voice boost, low cut, noise cut are very effective (particularly if what you want to hear is the voice range in a recording). The digital vari-speed playback is fair at best (always seems warbly to me), as is the voice-activated recording (it tends to cut off the first word). From reviews, and the manual, Olympus offers a low cut switch, and preset/manual recording level settings, but its playback adjustments are limited to some preset reverbs. Yuck. Sony's microphones are great, but I believe they are not on par with the Oly's. This is purely subjective, but again the "target market" means that one product requires quality voice reproduction while the other requires quality musical reproduction. I believe this purpose may drive the internal processing of the recorded signal just as it does the features offered by each product. I consider this one a tie.

Letdowns in both Camps

I am disappointed that the Olympus does not feature any better "listening adjustments" like equalization settings. This seems to be a natural fit for a musician's device. Every iPod's got it! On the Sony side, I am disappointed that "fast forwarding through" recordings is somewhat choppy, and for long recording of over 30 minutes it tends to take a while to get farther in. To be fair, it does speed up the longer you hold the scan function, but I miss the ability to set the scan speed the way I could with RockBox on my iRiver. Some devices do this, and scan MP3's smoothly.

Surprises Too

Some little bonuses haves surprised me. Both recorders come with 5 pre-made folders, labeled Folder01 through Folder05, for recording. The Sony manual led me to think that this was it, these 5 folders were what I had to work with. However, when connected to a PC the Sony allowed me to create more folders, change the names of existing ones, and generally treat the files and file system the way you want. I renamed the folders to more useful names, and created a few others, and it handled them all just fine when disconnected from the computer, never complaining. (Of course, if I reformat the entire drive, I'm sure it will go back to its defaults...which I will change again. But for a Sony product to give me this kind of leeway and freedom, pretty cool! I can't say how the Oly handles the 5 default folders, or whether more are allowed.

Sony's got convenience down with this one. The first menu item displayed is always the recording mode (44/16, MP3, LPEC, etc.) and, beside that, the recording level (with a Music preset, three voice presets Normal, High, SuperHigh, and Manual). Nice and clean, and well thought-out. Also, I can put MP3's on it, and it will play them back with a wonderful, warm, analog sound. So I can use it occasionally as a portable player, which it's pretty darn good at!

Overall

If you need more critical musical recording quality in an "all in one" box, the Olympus is closer to this goal provided you understand its limits and are mindful of them. I consider it more of a "very high quality capture device" for music when you are in more controlled recording environments. I don't think of it as a music player.

If you need more portability, ease of operation and convenience, and are willing to listen to a lesser (but still very high) audio quality, the Sony is worth a close look. Listen to the audio samples on the Sony Canada site (www.sony.ca). I consider it more of a "high quality capture and playback device" for all kinds of recording situations, indoors or out.

I needed a voice recorder that could be used mainly for recording lectures from about 40-50 feet away as well as some dictation. I also wanted to be able to make high-quality recordings for the occasional podcast. The ICD-SX700 seemed to fit the bill, and in most ways it does. However, it had a couple of design flaws that ultimately made it unusable for me, but might still work well for you. Similar to a previous review, I compared this to an Olympus LS-10, and ultimately stuck with the LS-10.

First, the good. There are plenty of recording formats available. The CD-quality PCM format is what I used for most of my testing, as the LS-10 has the same quality level (44/16). The built-in mics are great on this device, and it was able to pick up a lecture at 40 feet clearly; it was pretty much the same quality as the LS-10. The zoom function on the LS-10 made it a little clearer. For some reason, Adobe Soundbooth was able to clean up the LS-10's file a little better than the SX700, but maybe I was just doing something wrong. Basically, however, the sound was equally good (way better than the Olympus DS-40 I have tried in the past).

The SX700 is basically an "instant on" device. You put it on hold to put it to sleep, and taking it off hold wakes it up instantly. You can push record as fast as humanly possible and it will start up. The LS-10 has about a 3-5 second startup time. The SX700 also handles pre-record mode better than the LS-10. For the LS-10, you hit record once to arm the device and check the levels, then record again to start recording. For the SX700, pushing record just starts instantly recording. If you want a pre-record mode, you hold down record for a second. So, if you just want to start recording instantly on the SX700 you can, and if you want to set your levels first, you only have to wait a second. A big plus to the SX700 here.

Being able to charge the batteries from the USB is nice, but not such a big deal.

Now, for the problem areas. The mics are good, but they are also very sensitive. You have to crank the input way down if you are dictating right into the device. The LS-10 has a "high-low" switch on the side, but the SX 700 doesn't. You have to either go into the menu and pick a volume, or change the levels manually. The LS-10 has a dial for setting the recording levels, and is basically instant. On the SX700, it's digital, so you have to hold down the volume button and wait for it to move to where you want it. It can be a bit frustrating to get it set exactly where you want it. Also, the mics are very susceptible to popping and wind noise, making the windscreen basically mandatory if you are dictating directly into the device. Which brings up a MAJOR FLAW for me: the headphone jack is on the top of the device, between the mics. You cannot plug in headphones and have the windscreen on at the same time. This means you cannot monitor yourself while talking into the device without getting a bunch of popping sounds. I would have thought Sony would have put the mic jack up there and the headphone jack on the side, but they did the opposite, and it was a major oversight. With mic sensitivity already an issue, this makes it very hard to know if you are distorting or not. The LS-10 and the SX700 both have limiters, but only the LS-10 has an automatic gain control. With the LS-10, I can set the AGC on and just start talking. With the SX700, I found I really had to futz around with the levels just to get a decent sound when dictating. If you just want to record a quick memo, the LS-10 can give you better sound more quickly, though you do have to push record twice.

Also, I was able to get better sound out of the LS-10 when using my lavaliere mic; the recording from the SX700 sounded a bit more distant and muddy.

Another problem with the SX700 is recording capacity, but this may not be an issue for most. With only 1GB, you can only get 90 min of PCM. With the LS-10, I can get 3 hours with the built-in 2 GB and hours more with a cheap SD card. The Sony has a very nice compression codec, but I'm on a Mac, so I have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it converted. The highest MP3 quality is 198kbps. The LS-10 can do twice that, and I can just drag and drop it on my computer. That's only an issue for us Mac folk, I suppose.

In the end, I really liked the audio quality, form factor, and speed of the SX700. However, the botched headphone jack placement, the limited recording capacity, and the unavailability of Sony software for the Mac pushed me to the LS-10. However, the SX700 is an excellent device, and is half the cost of the LS-10 for the same basic quality of sound. For what I plan to use it for, those limitations added up to be too much. But for many folks, I think the SX700 is a very solid device at an unbeatable price point, especially if you plan to use the device in only one or two different scenarios and don't need to change the levels often.

Buy Sony ICD-SX700 Digital Voice Recorder with Voice Operated Recording Now

I've spent a week with my new 700 and I give it two thumbs up. I'm very critical on gear, and this little unit is hard to find fault with. So, let's get down to it. As a voice note-taker , it has everything you need. Set at mono and on one of the lesser recording types, you have days of recording time. Organizing your recordings into files is easy. If you get the D model, you get the software to do automatic voice to text conversion. Where the fun begins is with using the 700 as a Field-recorder. It has 10 different recording modes. In CD quality 44.1Khz 16Bit linear, you get 1.5 hours of flawless recording. It is the same as if you used a rack-full of digital recording equipment. The on-board mics sound excellent. One note, they (the mics) have the bass lowered a bit to accommodate voice recording, so if you plan to to field to CD recording of live music, I would get a simple stereo hand mic. You can plug it right into the 700. Mode-wise, 44.1khz/16bit gives the best results for music. Second best is Sony's own Lpec stereo HQ. It gives 11 hours of stereo recording and the provided software converts it to any format you want afterwords.

If 44.1/16 is 100% quality, then Lpec STHQ is 85%. Number #3 is 192khz MP3. I would give it 75% on the quality scale. Lpec STHQ is a fine and efficient mode for music.

It would take an engineer like me to hear the difference.

Battery life is excellent. Pop a set of rechargables in there and the USB cable charges them. If I had one complaint, it would be that the level meter does not show on playback. Once you record it right, you don't need to see the meter on playback. Kick on the limiter to be sure you don't go over 100% when recording. That's it.

For $125, it does everything the $300 stereo hand-recorders do..and more.

Read Best Reviews of Sony ICD-SX700 Digital Voice Recorder with Voice Operated Recording Here

Since none of the reviews I read here really deal in-depth with dictation, I thought this review might be useful to save someone else the return postage on this recorder. It's too late for me.

I bought this recorder for dictation after doing lots of research, including reviewing the owner's manual to confirm that it had the functions that I needed. This is a fine recorder if you are just recording and then playing back. If, on the other hand, you buy it to use for dictation, it is a miserable waste of plastic. It has overwrite and review functions that should work for dictation. However, the number of steps to cue it up to the place you want to start overwriting and recording make it a real pain compared to a simple microcassette recorder. Also, if you do not stop before the end of the file, instead of appending the new recording to the old one, it creates a new file. At the end of your dictation session, you could easily wind up with your dictation spread across five files when you thought you were working out of one. That means a lot more work for the transcriptionist. This machine also requires a four pedal setup for the transcriptionist, which for most of us means buying a new pedal for our transcriptionist in addition to the recorder. At the end of the day, even though Sony promotes this for dictation, it just is not close to their microcassette recorders or some other digital voice recorders.

UPDATE: If you want a digital voice recorder for dictation, try the Olympus DS-2400. I bought it after this Sony and it was night and day. The Olympus is perfectly intuitive and it does all the things that the Sony should do but doesn't.

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Elsewhere in these reviews, professional musicians rated these recorders for high-quality Music Dulication. However, I am interested in high-quality Voice Evidence. For my purposes, this unit is the best I have ever used.

I have owned about 5 digital recorders in the past. This one is the best. Be careful that if getting a Sony, you get this one that uses Sony's proprietary Digital Voice Editor format, like this one does. It is much easier to edit a recording with the Sony format, and then convert it to MP3, than the other way around. Editing is important for those times you forgot to turn off the recorder, which has happened a lot: I do not want conversations with my spouse inside the same MP3 recording as a professional contact. The Sony Digital Voice Editor software makes it a breeze to redact unintentional recordings. The date/time stamp makes it easy to hunt for certain voice contacts months or years later. The Sony format (with V-up) allows one to turn up voices over background noise, which greatly eases playback clarity.

This unit's record button is mounted on the SIDE, not the front. Side-mounted buttons are very very important. Those lesser units with front-mounted controls are much harder to operate discretely. I cannot stress enough how important side-mounted controls are. Do not get a recorder that has the record/play/erase buttons on the face of the unit if you ever want to use this recorder discretely.

Used discretely in my professional work, this voice recorder has disproven many instances of slander. Those who told lies about me were proven to be perjurers. But be sure to check your state's laws before making discrete recordings. Linda Tripp (of the Lewinsky affair) was criminally charged over illegal recordings; be sure of what you are doing is legal before making discrete recordings. If only that Cambridge Police Sergeant had used one of these digital recorders, we would not have seen the White House hosting its "beer summit" with a certain Harvard Professor:I know from experience that Olympus makes some good recorders with side-mounted buttons. But Olympus software is not a free internet download, and Sony's is. Getting the Sony software (for free) loaded onto new computers has been a breeze; those with Olympus products who could not find their program/driver CD's were stuck.

In addition to being great for voice evidence, many musicians rate this unit as #2 for music! Singing Sergeants everywhere will rejoice when they buy this recorder.