pook

But here's the catch: the quality has to be damn good. I have a $20 portable Radio Shack handheld cassette player with a built-in mic that sounds really good for recording meetings and one-on-one conversations. But to get that on my PC I have to do the whole "line-in" record thing.

I need an MP3 player that has a good built-in mic OR a mic input.

Konichiwaneko

the iriver lines have mic and mic inputs, and adjustable compression rates. The quality is actually stunning also.

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skaven

My dad got a voice recorder from Radio Shack that is supposed to be able to hook directly to a computer. Quality is quite good -- dunno what format it is though. I think the "basic" model (without a USB interface) was $60, and the "fancy" one was $90 or so.

Glory's Sun

get a minidisc player.. works great for playing mp3's and recording... I use mine all the time.. I think SecretMethod70 uses his for voice also.

fatbob

the ipod has a thing called imic that you can buy.
the quality is fine if you are using it to make notes from or something like that but it is not broadcast quality or anywhere near, i think the sampling rate is as low as 8kbs...

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change happens when those who don't normally speak get heard by those who don't normally listen.

braisler

I have a Nomad IIc from Creative that has a voice recorder function. I haven't tried it enough to be able to tell you whether the quality is good enough or not. But you just can't beat the price. You can get one used on Ebay for maybe $50 or so. They have a small internal memory, but you can add to this with any size SmartMedia card that slips in the bottom.

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You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
- Albert Einstein
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Val_1

I've been thinking about getting the Creative Zen Micro. It features a voice recorder. I haven't gotten it yet, so I can't really vouch for it, but I'll be ordering it soon.

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I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.

-Frank Sinatra

Church

I was actually just going to start a topic on this. I picked it up today and all I can say is wow. What a great buy. Easily the best money I've spent in a while. The sound is excellent, you can sync it up with Outlook to keep track of your events using a calendar, the voice recorder, the FM radio, and I'll be damned if that neon blue light that goes around the outside isn't the coolest thing I've ever seen!

Compared to an iPod mini, it goes far beyond it. The ONLY thing that I like better on an iPod is the fact that its PC and Mac compatible, as the Zen Micro is only PC compatible.

9.5/10 from me!

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Through counter-intelligence, it should be possible to pinpoint potential trouble makers, and neutralize them.

HGClown

My Dell jukebox has a built in voice recorder and also can be used as a portable file storage device

spillblood

i have a samsung that recs and it sounds really good. model was tp-v5 or something like that

duck0987

My wife has an iTalk for her iPod, works great, she uses it to record lectures in her classes, and it has great sound quality.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/italk/

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shakran

check the Neuros Audio. Less than an Ipod, cooler, plays mp3's, built in mic which is good for voice, and mic jack if you want to hook up a better mic.

Val_1

I did go ahead and get my Zen Micro last week. Great buy! I'm very happy with it. Great sound, EQ, FM, voice recorder, syncs with Outlook, if you want. The controls take a bit getting use to; definitely not intuitive. But, after 5 minutes of playing around and I got it down. It can even record FM broadcasts. I would say that the FM tuner doesn't work real well. It might be because I'm using a different set of headphones than what came with it (often the headphones themselves are the antenna on small radios).

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I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.

-Frank Sinatra

radioguy

can you buy other headphones that have an antennae in them? i want the micro and a big selling point is the FM radio. i wouldn't want this little thing to cause me to look elsewhere.

cyrnel

I bought an Olympus with USB (VN-480) for ~$90, probably the same unit. Quality is okay. It looks cool, like a superslim phone. Good voice activated recording, folders, scheduled recording, 64MB which provides maybe 4hrs at usable quality. Whatever format it uses internally, audio lands on the computer as WAVs. Transfer is incredibly slow. About 1MB/minute. At HQ recording this makes it about 10:1 transfer:realtime. Better than analog transfers but not what I was expecting.

My preference was for the newer Panasonic models but (famous last words) nobody local had them in stock and I couldn't wait.

Hampshire

i also have a minidisc player that i use for recording, its really good. Good quality, very easy to transfer, hope u find what u are looking for