Olympus DS-30 Digital Voice Recorder

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.

This recorder is awesome. Easy to use, lightweight, excellent sound quality, comfortable for transcribing. I also love that I can archive all my recording on my computer. The possibilities are endless. Great, great buy.