Guys ... I searched the Usenet in vain for a report on this gizmo
before I bought it and there was not a word out there. Now that I have
bought one, I thought I'd post a review for anyone else thinking about
purchasing one. If you're not considering one of these, ignore this;
it's long and boring.
-------------
I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box of my new Harbinger
digital voice recorder. It comes with a delightful array of
accessories; lots of little toys for us little boys.
The unit is pleasingly small and fits into a shirt pocket with no
noticeable sag. To test the microphone sensitivity, I recorded the
conversation at a gathering with the recorder in my shirt pocket and
it worked very well indeed. The only problem this gives is that every
movement causes your shirt to rustle against the unit and creates a
lot of distracting noise in the foreground. You have to sit very still
if you are going to make clandestine recordings in this manner. It is
a very discreet shape, though, and sits unobtrusively on the desk in
front of you if you wish to record openly.
Which brings me to the wireless microphone. It was primarily for this
accessory that I decided I wanted this DVR. I attend lectures from
time to time and thought that I could place the mic on the speaker's
lectern and record his material from the auditorium. Nope. The
effective range of the microphone even in ideal conditions is
absolutely no more than 25 feet ... not the 'up to 25 yards' that the
advertising puff promises. If you move any further back than 20-25
feet (MAX) an horrendous hissing starts up and the signal-to-noise
ratio becomes unacceptable. That said, the sensitivity of the in-built
microphone on the unit is very good, so if you can get reasonably
close to the person you are recording, the wireless mic is probably
unnecessary. It certainly can't be used for any clandestine purposes,
so all you budding KGB operatives had better look to more dedicated
surveillance equipment.
The built-in FM radio is pretty good. On some (more distant) stations
there is a lot of background hiss which can't be tuned-out but hey, if
you want Hi-Fi sound, buy a Hi-Fi. I use it mainly to catch the news,
and although strong stations' music output sounds pretty good (using
the headphones), you wouldn't probably use this as your main radio if
you are a person who uses the radio a lot. You can record from the
radio too, which might be useful in some circumstances.
Surprisingly (though logically when you think about it) the aerial for
the FM radio and the pickup for the wireless mic is provided by the
earphones. This means that if you are listening to the radio through
the speaker or you are recording from the wireless mic, the headphones
must be plugged in even if you are not using them. For music the
inbuilt speaker sounds tinny, but then you'd expect that with a
speaker the size of a postage stamp. One of the supplied accessories
is a plastic presentation case that, if you place the recorder in it
and switch on the playback, makes a sort of sound-box that gives a
little more presence and bass to the playback. A little
Heath-Robinson, I thought, but better than nothing if you're
desperate.
The headphones are comfortable to wear but the lead is very short,
meaning that if you want to listen and move about you'll have to put
the unit in a shirt pocket; the headphone lead isn't long enough to
stretch to a trouser pocket, guys. I sometimes marvel at what some
companies do to save a few bob. What would also have been useful is
the provision of an upper-arm strap so that it can be used in the gym
to listen to MP3s.
Also supplied is a device and cable that sits between your telephone
and the wall socket and allows you to record telephone conversations.
I haven't tried this yet, as I'm not sure I'll ever use it, but I
suppose it may be useful one day. There is, of course, a USB cable for
connecting to your PC.
The user-interface takes a little getting used to because the manual
is rather cryptic, but once you've had a play with the unit you'll
find most of the functions easy to work with. The main record
stop-start and pause are the buttons on the front panel and present no
problems. The mode selector, volume control, radio station selector
and the play, fast-forward and rewind functions are operated by a
wheel on each side of the unit that respond to up, down and push-in
actions. Within 10 minutes you'll have it sussed although as I said,
the manual is a little short on detail.
One caveat though. This gizmo chews batteries! A single, fresh AAA
Energizer battery will last around 4 hours of continuous recording
with the speaker switched off. A weekend of lectures I recently
attended used 4 batteries. So if you're using it for listening to MP3s
or the radio and then intend to use it for recording anything
critical, make sure that you install a fresh battery before you begin,
or like me, you'll lose the end of a critical recording because you
won't have realized that the thing has died.
One last gripe - the little rubber cover for the USB port on the side
of this thing pops off the first time you unplug the USB plug after
the first connection - and you can't get it back in without completely
dismantling the thing (thus probably invalidating the warranty).
The CD supplied provides a download manager for Windows operating
systems below W2K and XP (these don't need one) and software for
converting the format stored on the recorder to .WAV format for your
PC. There is also a program that allows you to edit .WAV files so that
you can remove unimportant (or embarrassing) sections from your
recordings. The conversion program is vital if you wish to transfer
your recordings to your PC as the native format on the unit is a very
highly compressed format they call .hgl, which has a compression ratio
of about 15:1 with the resulting .wav files. Uncompressing a .hgl file
of an hour's duration took about 6 minutes on a 1.6GHz PC, during
which time most of the processor's time was taken up, making it almost
impossible to do anything else at the same time. A less performant PC
would take commensurately longer.
Disappointments? Other than the lack of range of the wireless mic, the
stoopid USB port cover and this thing's voracious appetite for
batteries, none really.
Is it worth 180 pounds? No. Not without a real wireless mic. There are
plenty of 128Mb voice/MP3 recorders with radio, such as the i-Beam,
for half the price. Still, it is well made and a very pleasing shape,
size and weight.
Why did I keep it? I'm a bit of a moralist and since I ordered it and
then used it for a weekend I felt I couldn't reasonably return it as
if it were unused. I wouldn't have bought it had I known of its
limitations bearing in mind its high price.
I bought mine at gadgets.co.uk
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