I hate my recorder

I am laughing my ass off so hard as I visualize this. My chest is hurting.

 

I'm on my second Panasonic recorder in probably five years......no complaints. *knocking on wood as I type this*

 

I've had an Olympus recorder for five years and the only issue that I have with it is my own damn fault, as it met with a bowl of chicken soup. (And I still dried it out and it still works. Records, everything. It's just on playback the sound is a little wonky.)

I also have the voice recorder on my BlackBerry, which is nice. But I had the same thing happen to me this week - went down, did an interview with my BlackBerry. It locked up later and I had forgotten to save the recording and *poof* a 10 minute interview gone. (The coach was fully okay with doing a second interview with me. And I figured out what was wrong with my BB...it was saving all of my stuff on the device and not the memory card so it was out of memory. Transferred everything over and blam. Works perfectly now.)

And my car is like the Reporter Mobile. I keep at least one or two notepads in it at all time, I have a pack of pens in the glovebox and a bunch of different sizes of batteries. I'm nothing if not well-prepared...and I've had pens literally die on me in the middle of a game.

 

1. Awesome that iPhone has an airplane mode. They really do have an app for everything.

2. Last five recorders have been Olympus (over like 10 years), none more than $60. Drop the tapes, just like you did in your car stereo. Hopefully.

3. I'm same way on the batteries. When my recorder goes to the "batteries half-full" status, I'm constantly checking to make sure they're not out. Lots of AAA batteries bought on those.

 

Most phones do. My Sanyo, which was discontinued two years ago, has one, too.

 

The worst thing that ever happened to me with a recorder is that the volume was turned down so low that it didn't pick up the interview. I drove two hours to redo it. It was better the second time because I was able to ask more complex questions based on what I remembered from the time before, and the subject was more relaxed.

I have an Olympus WS-311M and love it (though it goes through batteries quickly). The only thing I can't figure out is why the playback speed gets faster and slower, seemingly without me doing anything. How do you control that?

 

I've been fortunate to not have major problems with my recorder, other than the occasional times when the battery runs out in mid-interview.

 

This this will solve ALL of the problems listed above. It syncs what you write with what you hear.

http://www.livescribe.com/

So you old guys who only like to take notes, you go back through with the pen later, tap on what you were writing, and hear the coinciding audio from the exact moment you were writing.

Guys who use new recorders? This this is way better, picks up the same sound but you don't have to shove it in someone's face to make sure you're picking it up. Also comes w/3-D headphones that have embedded mics that hear what you hear, so if you're in the back row of a press conference with the head phones on you don't miss anything and you don't have to worry about running up to the podium to press record when the coach walks in.

 

I think we've all heard about that thing 95 times. But has anyone actually used it who can vouch for 100 percent accuracy? I doubt it.

 

Plus, I'd love to see that work in a NASCAR garage when you're 8-people deep in a huddle of 30 people around Junior while they rev engines 10 feet away. When you're lucky to be able to reach far enough to get your recorder close enough to record anything, let alone be able to write.

In a classroom or meeting or one-on-one? Maybe. But it's just not feasible for most on-site reporting, I wouldn't think.

 

The use of the phones, unless you have a world phone, probably won't mess with the nav systems (due to the frequencies). What it will screw with is the electronic fields on the plane. And that could really fuck something up. One phone won't do it, but if you get a whole plane? As my pilot friends tell me, it can really be bad. Though I don't understand it at all. Especially since everyone is going Wi-Fi now.