Small recorder... big questions

The latest addition to the Olympus range of hand-sized portable recorders leaves Ian Macrae mostly wondering and dissatisfied

Electronics company Olympus, perhaps most famous for its range of highly affordable compact cameras, has been in the news recently, But it’s not been because they’ve recently developed a revolutionary new product which hit the shops just in time for the festive rush.

It’s because, like the historic mountain after which they’re named, the company is rooted in Greece. And like the economy of that country, Olympus’s finances have been hitting choppy water.

Not that they haven’t been developing new products and bringing them to market. Towards the end of last year – and, indeed, just in time for the present-buying spree – came the latest in their line of small, hand-held voice and music recorders, the Olympus LS-3 Linear PCM Recorder.

The size, shape, style and layout of the unit will be recognisably familiar to anyone who knows earlier models in the range such as the DS-50 or DS-75. It also shares with them a feature which has made this range popular with groups of disabled people despite their relatively high price ticket. Namely voice guidance in some areas of the menus and operation of the recorder.

We’ll come to those and their usefulness in a while.

There are many reasons why disabled people find uses for portable recorders. They can be used as a quick and handy way of making personal notes or taking down phone numbers on the fly; for students with print access issues they provide a pocket-sized way of making contemporaneous verbatim notes at lectures and seminars; and, of course, their usefulness is obvious for someone in a job like mine which involves interviewing people and reporting what they say accurately.

Another variation with the LS-3 is in its array of microphones. Its predecessors have had a pair of stereo mics embedded into units or attachable via a 3.5mm jack. On the newer model these mics are augmented by a third, placed centrally, which can be optionally turned on or off.

Finally, to that voice guidance feature. To be frank, it’s so limited that it will only ever be of minimal use. For instance, you’re guided through a pre-constructed folder structure with the voice announcing “folder A”, “folder B”, etc. But once you get inside the folders, no information about the numbers or identity of individual files is available.

Similarly, when you power up the unit the voice tells you whether the battery level is low, middle or high. Not only are these graduations so broad as to be pretty worthless, but on one occasion, having learned on turning on that the level was middle, the battery ran out on me shortly after I’d begun a recorded interview. I need and expect more accurate and reliable reporting than that.

For more information visit olympus.com