DIGITAL SPEECH RECORDER FREE
DIGITAL SPEECH RECORDER MAC

Buttons are clearly labeled, unlike on the Philips DVT2510, and a back button makes menu navigation much simpler than on the Olympus WS-853. It’s intuitive to use out of the box: Pressing the home button leads you to a simple toggle menu where you can record, fine-tune settings, and listen to music (that can be uploaded to the device from a computer) or recordings. The UX560 was the easiest recorder to navigate and use among those tested. Once she had the recordings, she noted how each recorder and app let her store the files, and how easy or difficult it was to transfer those files to her computer, label and organize them, and then upload them to Dropbox. For the office scene, Anna read a different Seinfeld monologue in a quiet room in her house to mimic dictation, placing recorders on a table 2 feet away from her mouth. The two read a Seinfeld dialogue, with the mics facing toward the “interviewee,” or main speaker, to mimic an interview. For the coffee shop scene, she headed to a crowded Starbucks and sat near the bar with her mom. For the lecture scene, Anna sat in the back of Sahithya Reddivari’s engineering class at Georgia State University in Clarkston, Georgia, and lined recorders up next to each other, with the mics facing toward the lecturer. That meant 192 Kbps for all recorders except for the Olympus, which maxes out at 128 Kbps (though even this should be good enough for voice recordings). Wirecutter writer Anna Perling recorded MP3 audio at the highest bit rates available on each device in order to get the best possible audio quality-this showed what each recorder was capable of.

Extra features: We looked for recorders with presets that adjust mic sensitivity and equalization to optimize for specific recording situations (these are sometimes called “scene select”) and background noise cancellation.

Format flexibility: We preferred the capability to record audio in a number of file formats and at various bit rates or sample rates to optimize for storage space or sound quality.

DIGITAL SPEECH RECORDER MAC

Easy file transfer: For moving files between the recorder and either a Mac or Windows computer via USB.A microSD card slot: This allows for memory expansion beyond the 4 GB minimum.At least 4 GB of internal memory: This amount allows for about 40 hours of recording time, depending on the chosen audio format.A simple-to-navigate file system: This should include self-explanatory buttons, shortcut buttons, and a convenient back button.An easy-to-read display: We preferred larger, uncluttered screens, and if possible, a backlight to make the screen readable in low-light or dark settings.

DIGITAL SPEECH RECORDER FREE

Good recording quality: While audio doesn’t need to be podcast quality, recordings should be intelligible and free from hiss, rumbles, echoes, or the excessive background noise that plagues poorer-quality recordings.The UX560 is also the slimmest recorder we tested-at 0.43 inch thick it can easily fit in a shirt or pants pocket. Like many of the other recorders we looked at, it comes with an adequate amount of onboard storage (4 GB) but accepts microSD cards, so you can record and store hundreds of hours of recorded audio should you need it. It also offers a better collection of features than the other models we tested, with an easy-to-navigate menu system, a bright backlit screen, 39 hours of recording time (in MP3 format), 27-hour battery life, voice-activated recording to pause and restart after silences, and a pop-out USB 3.0 connector that lets you recharge the recorder and transfer files to a computer easily. It produces clear, understandable audio in classroom, quiet office, and noisy coffee shop settings. In a new round of testing in mid-2017, the UX560 received the highest overall ratings from our panel of test listeners. The UX560 is similar to our previous, now-discontinued pick, also from Sony.

Digital speech recorder