Hi Jane,
I manage a relatively large Equipment Loan Pool at The University of
Birmingham, we have over 50 digital voice recorders amongst other things
in our stock. I would say voice recorders are the most popular thing we
lend out.
Jane said
> I don't want to spend too much money on the equipment as they may well
> disappear. (So not using those often specified in DSA Assessments)
Always a difficult balance as Tim has covered the reason why the more
expensive Olympus models are used. There is merit in consistency with DSA
in that students don't have to learn how to use them twice - a major issue
for about 50-75% of students borrowing our voice recorders.
I got some VN-5500PC Olympus voice recorders a while back which were £55
(via DSA suppliers ergo on our purchase system) which I like as simple for
newbies to use. I tried to get some more but they were no longer
available in the quantity (10+) I needed even on random suppliers by
credit card which was already a bit of a rule-bend.
I just typed "olympus voice recorder" into Google Shopping and got a
variety of results. Depending on where you can purchase things from and
budget I would go with either DM-650s as per Tim's advice and my thoughts
about relearning OR choose one of the cheaper Olympus versions perhaps
something in the VN Series which still have indexing and record pause but
don't come with software (most of my studes hate Sonority anyway) and have
gone down well with technophobic studes of mine in the past.
If students do want to see the index marks you can get free Olympus
software for mac and PC
DSS Player Lite app downloadable from Olympus website at
www.olympus.co.uk/audio/21005_software_dss_player_lite_21123.htm (Click on
Where to Buy link).
DSS Player Lite for the mac at
http://www.olympus.co.uk/audio/2590_software.cfm?category=8&productgroup=347&product=&os=9&result=
Olympus is good cos it records in a reasonably generic format. I've been
given Philips and Sony voice recorders before and they've been confusing,
complicated and had horrible proprietary formats. Olympus format
recordings can be played in Windows Media Player, Mplayer, VLC etc which
are all free on windows and mac.
Good luck, and if you get VN5500PCs or DM650s let me know as I can email
over the cheatsheet I made for our students for you to reuse.
Natalya
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