iPod Voice Recorder is here!

[artistry]

Just got my iPod voice recorder delivered from Apple (I'm in the UK)
First impressions good - it's a lot smaller than it looks on the pics.
When you plug it in a new screen appears with two options, record and stop and save. "Record" changes to pause when you select it.

The quality is qute good - I recorded 6 minutes of speech from fairly close up and the mike peaked a lot, so there's obviously some experimentation needed.
A six minute memo takes up 5.4Mb.

When you synchronise with iTunes a "Voice Memos" playlist appears.
The files are WAV files...

The only downside is that every so often the iPod disk starts whirring and it is picked up loud and clear on the recording.

All in all, first impressions of course, I'm quite impressed with this...

 

[mactastic]

Interesting. I wonder if anyone will be able to fix the HD noise problem.

 

[artistry]

quality at a distance seems good

Just tried to record myself from a distance, reading out an extract from a book in the sort of voice I use in a lecture. The quality is very good, even in my echoey living room, and the mike was pointed at the ceiling, rather than at me (the iPod was lying flat). I might try it for real in my next lecture on Wednesday.

 

[mactastic]

Someone needs to take one of these to a concert and report on the quality of bootleg they get. If only these things were around when the Dead was on tour! (Yeah I know they still tour sans JG, but it ain't like it used to be.)

I would imagine the mic is tuned for voice though...

 

[artistry]

Originally posted by mactastic
I would imagine the mic is tuned for voice though...

I understand from other discussions that it has been engineered for voice.

I just tried to conver the WAV file to MP3 in iTunes. About a third the size, but unlistenable...

 

[Macmaniac]

Post a sound clip so we can judge the audio quality!

 

[ebuc]

so early?

I've been holding off on buying one from apple, because the apple store shows such a long wait time: 2-3 weeks. How have you gotten it so early?

<edit>
Now apple says 1-2 days shipping, but I swear a day or two ago it was 2-3 weeks......
</edit>

 

[artistry]

Originally posted by Macmaniac
Post a sound clip so we can judge the audio quality!

have stuck two files on my iDisk (though I can't seem to synchronise it so you may have to wait a few minutes!)
Bear in mind I'm not a professional actor and I'm rushing...

http://homepage.mac.com/artistry/FileSharing14.html

Edit: Am currently synchronizing my iDisk so try at about 17:15 GMT - there should be two WAVs there with descriptive file names

 

[artistry]

Re: so early?

Originally posted by ebuc
I've been holding off on buying one from apple, because the apple store shows such a long wait time: 2-3 weeks. How have you gotten it so early?

I'm surprised I seem to be the first person anywhere to have one!
It's turned up on time - when I ordered it (straight after Job's speech) it said "Delivery early November".
It got here faster than Panther - it took over a week from shipping to arrival. This was next day after I got the email notification.

 

[ColoJohnBoy]

The up close .WAV file sounded better to me than the one from 2 metres away. I didn't try converting them to MP3, but even so, the quality sounded great to me, especially bearing in mind what the mike was designed for.