Sony Stereo Digital Flash Voice Recorder

I think woot needs to clear up the specs on this. It would be weird that you would have stereo mics, and stereo mic input- yet not have an option to record in stereo.

from Sony site:
http://store.sony.com/p/ICD-LX30BLK/en/p/ICDLX30BLK#features
Recording meetings, classes and lectures couldn’t be easier thanks to the ICD-LX30, desktop, stereo digital voice recorder.
yet under the specs tab you see:
Recording System : Digital, Monaural Recording

Woot needs to talk to the Sony rep to get this cleared up.

If you still use a Tracphone, I’m surprised you are not using one of these to record:

Otherwise known as your smart phone. Seriously, who needs a stand alone recorder?

Not everyone uses TracFone because they haven’t ‘upgraded’ their equipment. Many people don’t have a need for a smartphone nor the inflated monthly data costs that come with them.

Last time I checked, prepaid wireless was still a multi-billion dollar industry…

/posted from my iPhone

Would be interesting for the kids (no smart phones for them until they pay the up charge!) - most of their teachers allow recording in class.

But @$50 it is priced twice what it should be at a clearance outlet. If this thing cost Sony more than $10/unit after design, production & distribution cost they need to consider moving the factory. At least it includes a $2 memory card. :wink:

Very odd that Sony would put stereo mics in it but not record in stereo. The pics on the Sony site also clearly show two mics.

Even the external mic input indicates it is also stereo.

Guessing the mono recording mentions in several places are incorrect even on Sony’s site.

Much of the prepaid wireless now includes smart phones which has inflated the revenue greatly. But you are not aware of the dynamic with radiojohn and you can’t appreciate the humor.

Yeah, the inconsistencies on the Sony site is what makes us nervous on making a guess so we have a call into our Sony rep. Darn west coast people haven’t woke up yet though.

Not very odd at all. Have you ever thought that the purpose of multiple microphones is to create a phased array and that it might be used to steer and shape the main lobe to the loudest source and thus provide better intelligibility and reduced background noise. I’m not saying that this Sony does; but I do when making live recordings.

Even the official Sony brochure says it records in mono so this is likely a scenario where they have or will have a model above it that actually records in stereo but did not bother to design a separate case/circuit with only one mic, mono mic input, and stereo output jack.

http://www.docs.sony.com/release/specs/ICDLX30_mksp.pdf

If I use one of these to record a meeting, could I then take the SD card home and listen to it on a Mac or PC?

In my prior post, you can clearly see that even Sony does not realize what they are marketing- because the contradict themselves

from Sony site:
http://store.sony.com/p/ICD-LX30BLK/en/p/ICDLX30BLK#features
Recording meetings, classes and lectures couldn’t be easier thanks to the ICD-LX30, desktop, stereo digital voice recorder.
yet under the specs tab you see:
Recording System : Digital, Monaural Recording

For recording Landline phone calls, the best device is a phone recorder from radio shack, that plugs in to the “remote” (motor on/off) micro jack of a portable cassette recorder, and mic or aux audio input jack. The unique capability is that it turns on when the phone is “off-hook” and off when “on-hook”, recording all conversation, including pauses, no clipping of the first syllable.
Unfortunately (to my knowledge) no digital device has this function. And not functional with cellphones…

IMHO this Sony recorder has several design flaws. Mono, 192k MP3-only, 32GB-limit on SD card, the angled shape of the bottom, 3v AC Adapter (option), no USB connection. It should have 32k vbr 22,050 mono MP3, and 320k cbr 44,100 Stereo MP3, 5v USB2 pwr/charge/data port, SDHC support and be flat shaped with fold-down wire stand to put it at angle. As-is, there are plenty of smaller, cheaper, better mono voice recorders out there.
Did you know that you can use vlan.org’s VLC player to play back voice recordings at double speed (and they’re understandable)? :wink:

@maebee1, from the Sony brochure (and product site): (the file format is MP3)

“A removable SD memory card eases file transfer to your PC while allowing for capacity flexibility.”

http://www.docs.sony.com/release/specs/ICDLX30_mksp.pdf

The last 2 of the last 3 sony products I’ve bought have broken and Sony has not honored the warranty. (TV from 2005 and a USB CDROM drive from 1998)

The 3rd product was a camcorder. After I bought it, I realized it didn’t have a standard firewire cable to copy video to a laptop and Sony sold proprietary software for $100 that was required for video capture transfers…my cheaper Sharp camcorder and all the non-sony ones worked great with firewire…

Anyhow, they’re on my list of bad companies now and I have to tell everyone! This might be a great product, but Sony officially just wants to use their brand name to make money and cares little about you once they get your money.

Does anyone else find it interesting that this is offered on the 39th anniversary of President Nixon’s resignation?
I wonder if it randomly inserts an 18 1/2 minute gap in all recordings?

While I agree that things need to be taken with a grain of salt, this goes both ways. Prepaid wireless is a great way to reduce some peoples’ monthly expenses, with Iphones as well. I have had a prepaid Iphone for the past year because I travel internationally exclusively and need an unlocked phone. I also like my Iphone, so that’s why I have a pre-paid card in an Iphone.

I pay $45/month for an open plan and it’s a newer Iphone, it’s not hacked; I bought it unlocked, and I save a lot of money by doing it this way. So please don’t jump on other members of this site when you are having an over tech heavy meltdown about something that you may not know everything about.

And now back to the voice recorder.

Cheers

[hr]STEREO RECORDING[hr]
Straight from our Sony rep:

The unit is STEREO AND RECORDS IN STEREO. The single speaker on the unit is of course monaural. But it is clearly 2 separate channels (right and left) and records and plays back the recorded file that way. The single speaker on the device is mono but that is just for instant playback. The file is recorded in beautiful stereo. Japan calls it “Digital, monaural recording” because each side is a single mic assigned to the right and left and yes technically it is “monaural” per channel.

SD not SDHC is $20 buck a pop, if you can find them.

Re: transferring sd card to PC

Here is a reviewer (from reevoo) that says it can’t be transferred