A Voice Recorder That Is Technically Up To Speed

This recorder performs very well in a variety of contexts: recording teleconferences, recording group meetings where people are up to 15 feet away, and at conferences as in an auditorium with Lavalier mic connected to a loud speaker.

I recommended my workgroup buy the Sony ICD-MX20VTP voice recorder because it was given such good reviews. We had to decide before the fiscal year ended and were in a bit of a hurry to make a decision on what voice recorder to get. We purchased it through our usual vendor for $300, although I think if you shop around or wait you can get it for more like $250.

The device has the important controls as external switches while most of the settings are electronic and part of the internal operating system. A cd comes with it for installing a player interface much like the iPod Mini; the controls on the PC interface duplicate those on the device itself. Most of the settings have to do with using the recorder itself as the primary technical system. This could work well if you spring for the extra memory stick duo card and get about 512 MB or so.

I am set up to transfer the sound recordings as soon as possible to a PC and then delete all files on the 32MB internal flash memory that comes with it. So, what conversion settings? The first step is to pick a recording setting that provides reasonably high quality. For now I am using 24-bit stereo (the second highest) for recording.

It even has stereo capability for music applications. However, I find that stereo is for music and adds nothing to a (more or less) monotone normal speaking voice and can magnify echos. Besides, stereo files are a big space hog. So, I record in stereo and save as a 44.1 mono WAV file.

File format conversion is done with the PC installed software. Most available conversion formats only work on a digital recorder. I save while converting from 24-bit stereo to 16-bit mono WAV. Resulting files are decidedly better than I have seen with the Myvoice recorder I've been using. I generally had to enhance sound files from group meetings with two effects: 1)make louder and 2)normalize. The Sony converted files sound great without needing any enhancement.