Sony Digital Flash Voice Recorder

May 5
18:52

2012

Roberto Sedycias

Roberto Sedycias

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Sooner or later it had to happen, one could see it through those tiny little memory devices that let you record one or two notes for instant playback, such as the location of your car, that tape recorders would become obsolete and now Sony's Flash Recorder has gone and done it.

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Available with 2GB of memory,Sony Digital Flash Voice Recorder Articles Sony's Digital Flash Recorder has made tape recording obsolete, unless you are a real audiophile who claims that nothing can match the highs and lows (hisses and dropouts, too?) of "real tape," by making it totally digital. Few would have thought a few years ago when digital recorders first appeared on the scene they would become the rule and not the exception and that tape would be going the way of "standard" TV, but it has happened. Sony has developed a small - 0.8 x 1.5 x 4.5 inches by 1.6-ounce - digital recorder that comes with 2GB of flash memory that is good for more than enough for 8 hours of recording, begging the question: so what more do you need? Well, the answer is a display and Sony has provided a very readable display (about 2 by 3) that indicates what the device is doing - recording or playing back (not hard to figure with a recorder, right, you're either doing one or the other). Actually, the display is quite good in that it tells you exactly where you are at any given moment and how much room is left for further recording. Voice-actuated, the recorder automatically shuts down when it sound doesn't meet a certain level and starts to record when the voice level reaches the level you have determined (VOX technology). It also features effective noise-cut technology so that extraneous sounds are filtered out and all you have is real source whether it's a lecture or interview or concert (it's ability to record music is quite something especially with its omni microphone as is its ability to record meetings). The Sony Flash will take a standard 8GB memory SD card so that you can have up to 10 GB of recording time. That translates to more than 20 hours or recording time or more than enough for several interviews, meetings and whatever else you may be thinking of recording. Because of its tiny size, you can slip it into a shirt or jacket pocket and not have to worry about it again as it turns itself on and off as needed. With its standard set of batteries, Sony claims it has more than 500 hours or recording time available, which is just short of a full month of fulltime recording, but you'd run out of memory space if you tried that, so we didn't. Instead, we did a couple of meetings and interviews and the fidelity was good with faithful sound reproduction.