Olympus DS-30 Digital Voice Recorder

I love this recorder. Read the other reviews. They will tell you how great it is. Why, then, only 3 stars?

(I own the DS-30, but these comments would also apply to the DS-40 or DS-50)

First, for Mac users. I found so many problems running the included software from Olympus that I just deleted it after a couple of days. My workaround is to plug in the DS-30 as a usb drive, drag the audio files to my desktop, and rename them there. (Don't delete the files on the recorder directly from the Mac; do it directly on the DS-30.) Since the files are in WMA format, I needed to convert them to a format I could edit, put on my ipod, whatever. I found a shareware program called easywma for [...] that's a peach and works perfectly for me, though there are plenty of other shareware and commercial solutions out there.

The second thing to know is that my DS-30 was a lemon. Yup, it happens. The key, though, is how Olympus service deals with a failed product.

After 3 weeks of working perfectly, my DS-30 just froze up. All I could do was remove the batteries and try again. This happened just as I arrived at an overseas conference where I was making a presentation. Very bad timing. Olympus service was generally great in fixing the problem - they even paid shipping - but it took way too long. I sent the DS30 to them, it came back "repaired" but with the same problem, I sent it to them again, it came back with the same problem, I sent it to them a third time and they finally sent me a new one. The whole elapsed time was about 8 weeks. They were gracious on the phone, I got to speak with humans, they returned my calls, and they met every time commitment they made. (If they said I would get it back in 10 business days, I did.) However, two months was really too long. I should have been able to return it and get a new one.

Skip ahead several months...

Now, I have a working recorder, I have a process to use it on my Mac, and I'm one happy camper.

By the way, I expected to use this as a writing tool and for lectures, notes and conferences. I was very pleasantly surprised by how good the highest quality setting is. I am able to record concerts and shows in stereo, convert the music to mp3 and transfer it to my ipod. And it sounds - surprisingly - really, really good!

I love this machine. I just had to share my tale.

P.S. Get a cover or case. It scratched the second day I had it.

Recording quality blows a much more expensive Sony out of the water. Much more important is how easy it is to use unlike the Sony.

As a novice type user of this kind of product I may not have much expert pull on whether or not this product is great or not, but it has done everything I have asked it to do.

It is rich with features, and it is very easy to learn how to use these features. There is a noticeable difference in the different recording modes. I have been using the highest grade mode, and even though this uses more memory it's so easy to transfer my recordings onto my laptop that I have not had a capacity problem yet.

I really like the index mark feature, that is helpful in longer recordings.

If I had one thing that I would change, I wish I could rename files while they are in the recorder. The file names get saved as a fairly long string of numbers, like a serial number, and it's hard to remember what what is and I have to just listen to the beginning of each recording so I know which one it is.

Although the product description and all of the literature that comes with the DS-30 only mentions compatibility with Windows OS, I have a Mac and it works just fine. The only thing I needed to do was download a cool program called "Switch", which is a free program that converts the WMA files of the DS-30 to MP3's. It does this quickly and I just drag and drop the converted files into iTunes. At this point, I'm able to burn the files to a cd if necessary. In short, don't let the fact you have a Mac discourage you from buying this excellent little voice recorder.

The Olympus DS 30 voice recorder is a versatile lightweight and compact stereo voice recorder with easy to use functions. It can be used for many applications. Weather you are in a meeting or classroom or even using it to record a soundtrack to a slide show or movie it is a great addition.