Olympus LS-100 Voice Recorder

I am a musician and was looking for a little multitrack recorder to preserve ideas on. I was all set to buy the little *oom handheld unit when I saw this was coming out in a few days. After watching a video on the unit (hype?), I did something I never do, I actually ordered a brand new product the day it was released. Initially this unit is very impressive but over the course of a couple months I've realized some serious limitations that one would not expect on a recorder costing this much. I'll skip the specs and get right to it.

There are 2 main modes in this unit, "Recorder" and "Multitrack". They are self defining with "Recorder" being single track. One issue I've run across is that some options are only available in one mode and not the other. There is also some sexy looking "lissajous" mode for checking the phase relationship between your mics. This mode strikes me as slightly ridiculous but I don't usually do field recording and adjust my mics by ear when in the studio. Since I use mainly the built in mics on this and don't use it in the studio it is basically irrelevant to me. I wish they would have put some of that effort spent on this into other areas as you will see below. Here are the main highs & lows:

PROS-

1. Very easy to use, intuitive, menus nicely organized.

2. Incredible battery life and power options.

3. Decent internal mics & sound quality in general

CONS-

1. No way to pause playback in multitrack mode

2. No index functions ala A/B loop, memory point playback in multitrack mode.

2. No way to add to/alter single tracks in multitrack mode

3. Drops playback of tracks after fast forwarding/rewinding

The PROS are pretty obvious. This thing is easy to use. I barely read the manual to get going. I wish I had, I would have hopefully noticed some of the shortcomings. Easy to use with amazing battery life...like 12hrs(!) That is my single favorite thing about it. It's more like a smart phone than a recorder. It shuts itself off after a programmed amount of time, it's great. I can't imagine having to put AA's in this thing....it would drive me crazy. Half the time I never even turn it off because it doesn't matter...never have to worry about powering down. When it's low just plug it in or plug into a USB port and it recharges quickly. The designers get an A+ on this aspect of the recorder. I didn't particularly buy this for "high quality" sound so I'm not going to get into it too much...suffice to say records in formats from MP3's all the way up to 96ghz/24bit and it sounds pretty darn good. I'm using this for demos am am settling on 44ghz/16bit as a default. There are a couple of compressors built in (1 and 2), the description of these is pretty vague but I gather one has a fast attack and the other slow.

I'll address the CONS point by point because some are pretty serious:

1. No way to pause playback in MTR mode. You need to think about this...imagine an analog reel to reel tape recorder, now imagine that every time you press "stop" when the machine is playing or recording, the transport instantly rewinds to the beginning of the tape...that's what happens with the LS-100! So, let's say you are trying to come up with a part for the 2nd chorus of a song...say 1:50 seconds into a song (like I was), when you are done and want to hear it, you only option is to press STOP (it instantly stops and resets to zero) then press PLAY, then hold down the Fast Forward key to advance to 1:45 seconds...and that's just to hear it once. If you don't like what you hear, you press "STOP". "RECORD" to arm the track, "PLAY", "FF" to advance to the 2nd chorus, "RECORD" to begin recording again, and then "STOP" and repeat the 1st process to hear it, every time having to press "PLAY" and then holding down the FF key for 10 seconds or so to advance to 1:45 on your song. It becomes very tedious to say the least. You can't pause record either but I'm not sure why you would want to (at least in MTR mode).

I will also point out that I was so incredulous on this pause issue that I actually called Olympus and spent 35 minutes on the phone with them after which they verified with me that there is no way to pause the unit. I also asked them to checked into a remote that they offered which says it offers "record/pause/play" capability but they tested that too and it would not pause either. This glaring omission (I have never seen any audio recorder, be it cassette, digital, reel to reel without a "PAUSE" button) is only exacerbated by CON #2 because...

2. There are no indexing functions available in Multitrack mode(?!) Hello, multitrack mode is where you need the indexing! The designers of this thing were smart enough to put Indexing and A/B loops functions into this thing but then don't let you use them in Multitrack mode? Makes no sense. Indexing would have possibly been a passable work around in the situation I described above under #1. As it is you are just SOL.

3. Can't alter tracks once they've been recorded. The best way to describe this deficiency is by example. Let's say you have a guitar part on track 3 that only appears in the chorus of a song. As you are developing the song, you come up with a nice little guitar part you'd like to play during the intro. Since there's nothing on track 3 until the chorus you decide to put it at the beginning of track 3. If you try it, here's what will happen: as soon as you arm track 3 to record during the intro (bear in mind, you haven't actually started recording yet), it completely erases everything that has been recorded on track 3 (turns it into a blank track). That's the bottom line with this complaint...you can't alter, add to, or partially erase tracks in any way once they've been recorded. You either accept them or erase them entirely.

4. This last one is strange. I recorded 7 tracks at 96/24. After 2 minutes of playback I rewind 20 seconds to hear the end again, but now, only 2 tracks play instead of all 7. If I stop and restart they're all there. I don't know if this has to do with the 96/24 setting or not. It's a pain. Another reason to have a pause button. This has happened both with the internal memory and an SD card. (EDIT ONE MONTH LATER: I've since duplicated this issues numerous times in various formats. It's like the recorder doesn't have enough memory to remember to add back all of the tracks after you've FF or RW more than a few seconds)

All in all it's a very mixed bag with this unit. The "Recorder" mode oddly enough has index functions and an overdub (sound on sound) option. I don't really understand this part of the design. Ok, I can layer sounds on one track but why would I bother when it has the multitrack mode...I mean that's why I bought it. What happens when I make a mistake? You'd have to start over completely and play ALL the parts again. The whole point of multitracking is that you record one track at a time so you can redo a single part if you make a mistake.

I do like the size and battery/power options. I take it with me in my car and listen to ideas from the night before. It's handy and I never have to worry about battery life. As it turns out I'm using the Recorder mode for rough ideas and then use the multitrack mode to arrange them. It's working but it can be tedious as I described. There's no doubt that using this thing has helped with the "creative spark", but you can get other products for less money that may offer greater flexibility...are they as easy to use? Not sure.

So ultimately what do I think? I consider it a somewhat powerful unit, clearly not designed by or for musicians, that should probably cost about 25%-35% less than it does. It's still a useful tool but with some serious limitations. I dock it a 1 stars for the pause, 1 star for the track "arm = erase" design, and 1 star for the lack of indexing support in MTR mode. If they could figure out a way to fix these items I think this would easily be the greatest handheld MTR unit on the market.

Hey, everybody: I wanna tell you how much of a no-risk purchase this is. Whether you record things for fun or record things for your profession, this beast slays all other animals. The battery life is superb; the instructions are clear; you have the ability to pause and resume while recording; and, this product does not misrepresent what it actually does. I compose music and lyrics and have formal training for classical, jazz, fusion, alternative and country; I do dictations that are crystal clear for use in my medical practice and jive nicely with dictation software; and, I play several instruments: Soprano, baritone and alto saxes; electronic violin; guitar; piano and keys; and, I also sing. To be honest, I don't notice any delay on monitoring that wouldn't be experienced in a live setting; and, the CD burner works well, so long as you don't use one that has no external power source. I had an old HP drive that came with a netbook I bought years ago; and that was a fail; but, if you get a CD burner with its own external power source, this is a one-person recording studio. BUY ITand be really pleased with what you have, because firmware updates are on the way, and I know it'll make this product even better than what it is. And hey: This is the Internet Ageresearch your purchases before you buy them so that there are no surprises or disappointments. I had expectations for this device as a stand-alone device for the majority of what I would do in a studio without being tethered to my computer for most tasks and this thing DOES. THEM. WELL.

Buy Olympus LS-100 Voice Recorder Now

Unless I'm missing something during a fair amount of field use, the XLRs on this unit are mic level *only* and do not accept line level signals without overload. Line In is handled by a crummy little mini jack on the side of the unit that also doubles as an unbalanced mic jack. This isn't made clear in the product description but is documented on pp. 14 & 15 of the manual:I find the idea of running line level into a mini jack unacceptable in a product of this level and price. I instead have moved on to a Tascam DR40 which does accept line and mic level signals via XLR:

http://www.amazon.com/DR-40-Channel-Portable-Digital-Recorder/dp/B005NACC6M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336429926&sr=8-1

Read Best Reviews of Olympus LS-100 Voice Recorder Here

I am using the Olympus LS-100 audio recorder with a 64GB SDXC card. When I use internal LS-100 memory everything is fine. When I record files to the SD card the wrong file "last modified date" shows up when viewing the LS-100 file via USB on my computer. If I copy the file from the LS-100 SD card to my computer, the wrong date remains. The correct date is set on the LS-100 and on my computer. If I use the SD card on my computer wiithout the LS-100, I can store files and they show up with the correct date. The LS-100 picks a Dec. 2010 date strangely enough. I would appreciate any cofirmation of this problem on other LS-100s. I actually exchanged my 1st LS-100 for another and the 2nd one has the same problem. The date is set-up properly on the recorder.

The recorder works fairly well other than that.

Update: Despite the Olympus denial of the problem, it was fixed in the current software/firmware update.

Want Olympus LS-100 Voice Recorder Discount?

Be awared that I am taking this recorder as a high-end digital audio player. I have been concerned about this product for a month. I am looking for a recorder possessing great sound quality to fit in my in-earbuds like IE80, JVC FX700, MX980 and SE530. High-end professional recorder could possess amazing sound quality than those usual commercial MP3 players. I think this item is great. Unlike SONY PCM-D50, its sound is warm but clearly delineated. I could hardly imagine that a recorder could be such warm and so suitable for enjoying music instead of 'analysing music' with a cold flavor. It's good for all my earbuds, especially my IE80, X10 and SE530. Undoubtedly it's better than PCM-D50.

cons:

1.It is a pity that its operation system only supports 3 languages. Also ometimes Chinese and English characters are displayed as unreadable codes. As I said I use it to listen to a great many songs including Chinese songs or Jap songs. This problem results in the fact that I can not recognize the name of the song I am enjoying.

2.There could be at most 5 folders in either SD memory card or internal memory and they must be named from 'folder A' to 'folder E'. I could not set up other folders with the name I wanted.

Of course this product is designed primarily for recording but not playing. But I don't think it's a hard work for the manufacturer to solve these 2 problems. Maybe they could be eliminated via updating firmware in the future. However, if you desire to obtain its good sound quality you have to try to be used to these problems which could bring sort of inconveniences.

Save $0.99 Off