I purchased this a week before my college classes started this quarter, primarily to record lectures. It is past the half way point of the quarter, and I am pleased with the results.Recording is easy; just snap it on the bottom of the iPod and the recording menu will automatically show up. From there you have an option of recording in either high or low quality.
Personally, I did not find any great difference in quality, but there is a significant difference in the power consumption (with the high quality mode sucking almost all the battery power of my 30gb iPod video when recording for 80 minutes), and file size (low quality mode records at about 2.5 mb/min) between the two options.
My class lectures are 80 minutes long, and I had no problem with battery life. In fact, I am able to record 3 of these lectures in one day, as well as walk around campus using my iPod, and still have about a quarter of the battery life left.
I have only tried recording when I am in the very front of the class; I felt it's not worth it to experiment by moving around the class each time. With that said, it works great when I'm up there.
My only complaint is that it cannot work with an iPod skin or protective case. That is, you have to take your iPod out of one of these for it to connect properly to the microphone.
Finally, if you are in college and have been considering recording your lectures, I highly recommend it. I am a third year, and wish I bought this sooner. You cannot write down everything your professor says, and when reviewing for a test and are unsure of a topic covered in the lectures, all it takes is a push of a button to hear what the professor said EXACTLY.
On my 3G iPod I used the Belkin F8E462 Voice Recorder for iPod, which offered much lower fidelity and recordings were often plagued with hard disk access noises -but it got the job done. I haven't heard either problem with the MicroMemo, and I've recorded three or four interviews in different spaces (plus I've used it with telephone handset pass-through recording cables). For face to face interviews, just place the MicroMemo about five feet in front of your subject and you should get great results.
I have had no problems with the included mono microphone but I've often opted to use the Sony ECMMS907 Digital Recording Microphone, a stereo, battery-powered condenser mic originally intended for use with camcorders. If you're considering a microphone upgrade, this works perfectly with the MicroMemo. I particularly like the fact that I can record 44K, 16-bit WAVs, so any juicy interviews can then be turned into podcast material, too. On a full charge, I've recorded for about two hours straight and still had some juice left in the battery.
The downsides: My first unit was flaky, but I returned it to MicroMemo and the replacement has been bug-free. And as others have noted, I had to invest in an easily-removable sleeve-style iPod case, since the MicroMemo will not attach through a full-enclosure case, like the ISkin eVo3. With the (optional) new case and the (optional) external microphone, the financial investment can quickly get steep -but it was money well spent for me.
Buy XtremeMac IPV-MIC-00 MicroMemo Digital Voice Recorder for iPod Video (Black) Now
I was very disappointed to find the signal to noise ratio on the Micromemo was terrible 40dB, akin to a cheap cassette recorder of yester year. Fortunately, when J&R Music World (who fulfilled the Amazon order as an affiliate supplier) received my poor review, they EMAILed me and were happy to give me a refund! Great service, J&R!!! They not only proactively look for customer feedback but took the initiative to contact me for a refund wow! Hopefully, Extreme will eventually fix the engineering problem on the MicroMeo I now find many others who have had similar problems.Warm Regards, MichaelI've been using the Micromemo for several months to record lectures and segments for my podcast. So far I have not had any problems, though there is an hour limit to recording even on "low" quality. At times I have used it with a Sony stereo microphone. I can not vouch for its use as a high-fidelity recording device, but for my purposes it has proved useful and it has vastly increased the functionality of my iPod.
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so far so bad. this was half the reason i bought an ipod and i ordered this in august (in stock now as described on website). half a dozen emails and phone calls later i cancelled the order (direct from xtrememac) and ordered from an apple store. the night it arrived (oct. 24th) i was pumped. i recorded my band practice as a trial for a Dylan concert the next nite. well, my 30g ipod (battery) died after about 30 minutes (there's no way to plug into AC while recording). for the recording i'll say this: mic input was distorted and worthless, possibly for "voice recording". line input was fairly clear, though mono with slight fuzz. i then substituted some vintage ecm mics in stereo, and the sound was better though still slightly fuzzed and less vs. the quality of recording to minidisc. then the battery died 30 minutes in, maybe this isn't meant to record much...during playback, after 15 minutes it starts skipping and missing chunks of data...night two, recording dylan. well, what a fiasco. i thought it would be great, i just angled the mics (ecm) towards the stage and hit record, line in. as it turns out my ipod froze after 27 minutes (probably the battery again). and what did record is missing bits/fragmented again. unusable.
i'm going to give it another try this weekend at a gig. i can already tell recording to MD is better, but i like the idea of recording and USBing right to my computer, importing the WAV real quick. let's hope things get better...
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