Good portable voice activated recorder?

[DanHenry]

I'm shopping for a good battery operated, digital, voice actived recorder for use with a scanner. I've checked web sites and reviewed user manuals for several models and narrowed it down to the features I'm looking for.

Does anyone have any suggestions or user reports (good or bad) on particular models they've used?

Features I'll need are:
-battery operated
-voice activated
-able to transfer files to a computer for editing
-line-in jack or mic jack for connection to scanner
-AVI or MP3 format would be nice. The cheaper models seem to use other formats that their software can then transfer to a computer for editing.

I am still considering eiher a true voice recorder or an MP3 player such as the iRiver T30 that does line-in recording.

Nice to have features:?
-The "voice recorders" have a speaker so you could do quick reviews with the speaker and not need a headset.
-AA batteries would be great but it seems like most use AAA.

I'm familiar with Xcorder and the other computer software available that does this. I'm a big fan of Xcorder but I'm looking for a portable solution.

Thanks,

-Dan

 

[NeFire242]

What about storage size? How many gigs are you looking at?
How do you want to transfer this stuff to your computer? USB, firewire?

 

[bna92]

I have an iRiver ifp-795 which records mp3s. It works well, but the voice-activated recording only works when using the internal mic, not the line-in jack. You can record from the line-in jack, but you'll have to put up with long periods of silence in the recording. On the other hand, the internal mic picks up all sounds in the room.

 

[DanHenry]

NeFire242,

All the models I've been looking at use USB. Most use a cable but a few of the Olympus ones and possibly others plug straight into USB without needing a cable.

As far as storage size, I'm looking for something that would record all day with a low quality voice setting. If it's a busy freq using VOX that would probably only be a few hours. All the models would probably cover this. If I go with a MP3 player recorder I'd probably go with the 1 Gib size.

bna92,

I've been through the iRiver ifp-795 user manual in the past. Thanks for confirming that it won't do voice activated recording when using the line-in jacks. I imagine the same thing is true of the other iRiver MP3 recorders.

If I use full-time line-in recording I could always transfer to a computer and then use Audacity to edit and remove the silence between calls. I've been using Xcorder at home to record my local county fire freq. 24 hours of voice activated fills about 90 minutes of audio. Then using Audacity I can quickly scroll through the audio file and visually see the fire tone outs. I can play the dispatch and then quickly skip to the next dispatch if I'm not interested in that one. I never thought that the best way to "listen" to audio would be to "look and listen" to it!

Thanks for the inputs!

-Dan

 

[NeFire242]

That is what I would do, USB and 1 GB. This would save a lot of headaches in the future, plus if your needs change, you could easily use it for other things or be able to trade it off for another product (toy).