I need a voice recorder that I can carry without being noticed. It should be able to record for several hours, with reasonable quality, and it should be easy to transfer the recording made off it onto something else. I know one or two people who post here may have dealings in this sort of thing, hence asking - pointers to more appropriate groups, or useful recommendations and advice, will be much appreciated.
J.B.
hi jerry, there is 2 options i would say, either micro cassette recorder
how about a usb stick that also acts as a voice recorder, they also tend to play mp3s etc.
It should be possible to transfer the recording onto a PC.
do a search on ebay for
usb mp3 or usb recorder or usb voice
128M go from about £25 up 256M from £35 upwards
A someone else suggested, a Minidisc recorder with a stealth mic. The original ones only do around 3 hours, but newer ones (with a 1gb minidsc) can do over 8 hours in high quality - more at lower quality.
As stated, a lot of the MP3 players do record as well, I have one that does, but I find the record quality is nowhere near that of my Minidisc recorder. Should be adequate for speech though - if that is the intention.
Lee
Some of the best of these are now entirely solid state, recording in MP3 format. Easy download to a PC. They act as MP3 players too.
Creative Labs do a decent one, and it uses pluggable memory so you can expand it. Olympus probably make the best ones, especially for mic quality (a serious difference), but they weren't as good as playback devices.
An IRiver 20Gb HD mp3 player would be capable of upto 16 hours recording at a time (that's the battery charge limit) Only problem is they are expensive! -
Dave
record voices in a large room.
Ooh-er, this isn't my technical forte. Would this give reasonable sound quality?
dnh wrote:
Well, they're cheap - would they do the job? - I've been thinking of something along the lines of:
The limiting factor is going to be the microphone and its position for this sort of stealth recording - not so much the medium it's recorded in.
And in a large probably echoey room, you're not going to get good results no matter what.
I'd also point out that if there are several people in the room, the results will be even worse, as they will overlap one another somewhat. Makes it almost impossible to understand.
If you watch any 'fly on the wall' progs, you'll find the bits they use avoid this.
The cheapest way to improve the audio quality in a poor acoustic is to get the microphone as close as possible to the source of the wanted sound.
As Dave Plowman suggested, you probably won't get results that are much better than borderline intelligible, you would be very fortunate indeed to get reasonable quality results. Much depends on what you are recording and what you intend to do with the recording.
Richer Sounds often sell cheap factory refurbished Minidisk recorders. I got a Sharp one a couple of months ago for around £45 and I would imagine that it might well suit your purposes.
It does have modes where you can record at a lower quality for much longer durations, it's tiny and it runs off a single AA battery for ages.
In message , burbeck writes
Moving recording media ?
In message , Jerry Built writes
I have an Olympus digital recorder, it records 2 1/2 hours of speech and the contents can be downloaded to a PC or conventional media. It's smaller than a tape based dictaphone
Or a recording MP3 stick with 128 / 256 megs memory
What do you want to record?
What sound quality do you require?
How small does it have to be?
Do you want to connect it to a microphone ?
Are you taping the MiL ?
both are way beyond your original spec
The 8 hours is rather longer than I need, yes. The voice- activated recording, possibility of easy connection to the telephone line and to a p.c. is very attractive, and the blurb says "crystal clear recording". The price tag is a downside, but I've got to have something like this, and soon. Any comments on the piece of kit in the above tinyurl, or knowledge of anything similar, or hints on where to ask? This matter is pressing, and if anyone can make further suggerstions......
J.B.
I have a 256mb memory stick/MP3 player. It measures about 9 x 3 x 2 cm and it is totally silent while recording. Quality is very good when you speak directly at it. It will still pick up a voice about 20 feet away but obviously its not as clear and might sound a bit jumbled if a lot of people were talking at once. There is no separate microphone but you could stick the whole thing in a shirt pocket. Bare in mind that it will record obtrusive rustling noises if it moves about in your pocket though. I would suggest this would be ok to record conversations you were having with another person but if you wanted to record a whole group of people it would be better to conceal in the room somewhere. You can transfer the file via usb to play on the computer or as it comes with a standard stereo headphone socket it shouldn't be a problem to connect it up to a cassette recorder or whatever. Nodge
"Jerry Built" wrote | Looks a bit big to me.... how good is the microphone? I need | to record voices in a large room.
Do you have access to the room beforehand? Could you position a wireless microphone more favourably? It would either have to be retrieved afterwards or left behind (and its subsequent finding would be evidence that recording has occurred). You could use a a pen, credit card or calculator transmitter, with a larger receiver/recorder in a briefcase or outside the room.
Owain
The 'crystal clear' recording might well be so under ideal conditions. But a concealed system about your person to do secretive stuff ain't ideal conditions.
Haven't you ever seen those 'fly on the wall' TV progs? And the bits they actually show you are the bits that worked...
Try
You should be able to buy a small mp3player that has direct encoding from the inbuilt microphone - people use them for lectures etc. you can typically record near CD quality for multiple hours. you can also use external microphones.
I use a Creative Jukebox 20Gb to record my Jazz sextet rehearsals - I use a small pocket battery preamp and sony condensor mic - v good results.
There's a whole internet culture devoted to "stealth" concert recording - a google search will reveal all...
John
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote | The 'crystal clear' recording might well be so under ideal conditions. | But a concealed system about your person to do secretive stuff ain't | ideal conditions. | Haven't you ever seen those 'fly on the wall' TV progs? And the | bits they actually show you are the bits that worked...
And even then they in-vision subtitle it most of the time.
Owain
As others have said your chances of doing this successfully with a body worn microphone are close to zero. The brain is extremely good at filtering things you don't want to hear when you are in a room but nowhere near as good when you are listening to a recording. You will also get all sorts of odd reflections (conference call and meeting recording microphones are mounted on big flat plates to reduce them) and other noises. If you are trying to record one person next to you or talking directly to you you might get away with it. If you are trying to record a group discussion around a large table or even worse rows of seating then the best you can hope for is fragments of speech.
Also be aware that most recorders are deliberately designed to be very easy to switch off so how you carry it can be rather important.
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