Digital voice recorder or just use a Cellphone recorder? ?

I’ve tried cellphone voice recorders but they do not have a very good sound quality as I found out. Do you think this is the same from those sony/olympus voice recorders?

I’m going to use it recording voices from a public place, so it will be noisy and I want to isolate a few voices, is this possible?
This will be used for gathering evidence while outside the house, there is a group of people shouting out insults & threats while I go by.

Answer by Mark M
Cassette Tape offers very good recording..I have a Digital Voice Recorder(IC)..by SONY..and its a nice device..I’ve recorded meetings lasting over 3-hours long..I would use an OPEN-mic so as not to be accused of SPYING..from what you have mentioned..I find your project suspect of spying..my CamCorder MIC offers excellent Audio(pick-up).

Answer by Terence F
Cellphones have microphones and circuits designed to pick up the user’s voice and attempt to isolate background noises. It will not work well trying to record voices from people who are not close to the mic.

Pretty much the same is true for voice recorders, except that their circuits are not so sophisticated. There are hundreds of millions of cellphones sold every year, only a few million voice recorders, so you can understand why the investment and resulting technology for cellphones is more elaborate.

The best thing for isolation is to use a real microphone that is directional, and keep it pointed towards the subject(s) you want to capture. You can use a digital recorder that has a microphone input and a fairly cheap microphone and still get good results. All news and professional recording is done with a specialty microphones. Some people see the little voice recorders reporters are waving around and assume that they are used to record and broadcast sound. But that almost never happens, the recording is for the reporter to be able to review and accurately quote the subject. Even then, most of the recording is usually mush, I’ve listened to quite a few over the years!

What do you think? Answer below!

Pressed tin


Image by fortinbras
Taken with an Olympus W-10 digital voice recorder with a built-in low-res digital camera.

i would like to know if digital voice recorder like olympus ds 30 or zoom 2can be played near sony mini sound system or connected to phone jack and record with that the cassettetape music which i’d then turn to cd with m y computer.
would that turn cassettes to cd’s
would like to know.

Answer by Daniel K
Yes, you can use the headphone jack on your stereo as an output to pretty much any recorder. You will need the right cable though. A 1/8 inch stereo to RCA cable would get you started:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102974&cp

For the Zoom recorder you would also need two RCA to 1/4 adapters:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062455&cp

Add your own answer in the comments!

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In this video, Gregory Johnson explains that Microsoft has a patent on their MWA audio file format. Because of this, many software programs are unable to read the audio files created on the Olympus VN-5200PC digital audio recorder.