Olympus DS-40 (512 MB) Handheld Digital Voice Recorder

The Olympus DS 40 digital voice recorder is an excellent recorder. It's sensitivity to the recorded voice gives an impression to a listener as if the speaker is actually speaking right on the recorder's mic. Whether the voice is recorded using Stereo or Mono, the produced sound quality is surprisingly good even though a lesser chosen quality is used to record sounds.

This digital recorder has the capability to slow down playback speed in order to listen to proper pronounciation of words from the speaker. The recorder can also do a fast playback, but I just don't see the point of this function.

This recorder has a digital flash memory of 512 MB, which allows to record sounds in extra high quality for 8 hours and so (see manual). The reason I bought the 512MB version of this recorder was that I wanted to record the speakers voice in extra high quality which would last at most 8 hours. Although it allows me to record for a longer period of time in extra high quality, one must be aware that in this quality the recorder would use more memory. In other words, for a recording period of 2 hours and 40 minutes, this recording occupies around 170 MB (megabytes). Therefore, lots of memory taken already from the recorder.

Also, the recorder has noice cancelling functions but it would distort a little bit of the speakers voice because the recorder is filtering some frequency components of the sound and thus it would take the frequency component belonging to the voice as well. Only a little distortion and you can still listen to the voice/sound well enough to understand a human speech.

In overall, the Olympus DS 40 digital voice recorder is surprisingly small, surprisingly sensitive to sounds, very good sound quality in XHQ (I haven't tried other lower recording modes), surprisingly good sound quality even at the HQ mono recording mode.

The price is expensive, but for this you get what you paid for.

This is the second DS-40 recorder I have bought because I liked it so much. I keep one in my backpack and one in my locker at school. When I know I will miss a class I loan it to a friend and don't miss a thing.

It is simple to use, simple to upload, compact, good on batteries, and has excellent sound quality. It has three sound settings and unlike a lot of recorders, these settings make a huge difference so use the appropriate one. When I use the "lecture" setting it does a great job of picking up the professor's voice even though I am recording in a big auditorium.

There is a guy on one of my classes who uses a super expensive mic to record directly to his laptop and his recordings sound no better then mine.

I bought the DS-40 specifically because the software had a Mac version, and because in addition to the lecture recording capabilities, it can be used as an MP3 player.

Little did I imagine that the Mac software does not seem capable of uploading podcasts & music from Macs to the recorder as it will from Windowboxes. The Olympus website did not have this important information for Mac users: shame on Olympus!

Found a note from a user who suggested just dragging & dropping the music/podcast files you want from iTunes onto the recorder icon. Tried this. The recorder accepted the files, but they were not to be found on the device itself. Eventually found one of the files, a 1-hour podcast, and it played fine. May have simply reached the storage capacity of the recorder.

Anyway I wanted to let Mac users know: the DS-40's cool MP3 feature doesn't work natively on Macs. Otherwise a fine little recorder.

But...feel sucka'd by Olympus.

This is a high quality recorder. It feels really well built, and its recording quality if very good. One nice feature is the ability to record with or without the detachable stereo microphone.

The Olympus DS-40 is a multiple use unit. You can record in mono or stereo with mics provided or you can use your own handheld or parabolic mic by way of a mini-plug. I use it for getting "man on the street" comments and "on the scene" reporting for my radio station as well as using it for ghost hunting with my homemade parabolic mic. Wonderful audio any way you use it and compares to TASCAM DR-07 and Zoom H-2 and costs less.