It would be great if Mark Nelson could do some comparison tests of the various recorders frequency response. It would a fair amount of work to do a fair and accurate test though so I don't know if this would be feasible or not.

Another challenge is that Mark only has an individual recorder for the month or so he's reviewing it, so direct comparisons are difficult or impossible; we've been doing these reviews for several years now.

That said, Mark does try to record the same guitar each time to make musical comparisons easier. Perhaps he should add a bass to the mix! I find recordings more revealing than spec charts.

Hello Everybody,

We are students of MBA program in EADA school in Barcelona.

In our Marketing class we are doing a Market research about Olympus LS-10.

I have been reading your post to try to understand the product because I am not a musician myself, but then we thought we could launch an online interview.

So, we will greatly appreciate if you could enter here and submit the interview, it will be no more than few minutes:

http://www.encuestafacil.com/RespWeb/Qn.aspx?EID=378672

On the other hand, as we will present the results to Olympus spain as part of our project. Think that you can really communicate with the company this way, so if you have something to tell, go ahead.

My personal mail is lubha@hotmail.com, so any comment is also welcome.

My apologizes for using the forum for our homeworks, I hope it is ok for everybody. If not, just tell me and I will remove the post.

Thanks a million!
Oscar

I have found this site to be incredibly valuable in researching new equipment.

It has led me to upgrading from an RH-1/MZ-M200 Sony HiMD, to the LS-10.

After a day of playing with it, I am generally pleased.

Some quick comments however. None of the "negative" remarks should be considered deal breakers for any one considering changing platforms.

It's a little bigger than I thought it would be, but still very portable. It's about the size of a standard TV remote, but heavier. The Yamaha units probably take the cake for small size.

Internal mics are convenient, and really nothing more. For best quality, you will want external mics. Also, handling noise can be an issue. Just the sound of pressing buttons, or of fingers moving on the case itself, will make problematic noise. If there were a silicon case option available, I would jump on it.

I wish the case had a provision to expose the mics and controls, so it wasn't something you had to "take off and lose" to use the recorder.

I miss the ability to change/toggle the display information as I record or play the recorder. The RH-1 was great in that you could select various displays, including frequency curves, time remaining on the track, time remaining on the disk, etc. The info on the Olympus is limited to current track time, and total track time (in play mode). It would be great if they could flesh this out as a software/firmware upgrade.

Doesn't charge when connected via USB. That is unfortunate, and missed.

Monitoring recording on the MD was phenomonal. I do mainly ambient recording. The Sony felt totally open, with tremendous clarity and ability to discriminate very subtle sounds. The LS10 sounds cardboardy while monitoring, and doesn't seem (so far) like something I would want to do continuously, perhaps only as an occasional check on levels.

2GB built in sounds like a lot, but when you are used to 7 hours recording time on a HiMD disk, you find it coming up short. Sure it was a compressed format, but ATRAC never gave me any problems sonically, and the recording lengths were incredible. I'm looking at getting several 8GB cards to do my typical recording sessions. Media cost is significantly more compared to MD.

No automatic track division/creation. I miss that quite a bit.

No audio samples as you fast forward or rewind!! How is that possible? Sony did an even better job than Apple's Shuffle for inserting a quick 1 second audio sample as you skimmed through a track, allowing very quick review of a recording. This is something they really must change!

I guess those are my main complaints.


Things I Like:

AA batteries! YooHoo!

Built in mics!

Easily operated controls! (Hated the RH-1 toggle and menu controls!!!). So nice to stop and start with large, plain buttons, and not weird switches, or micro dots.

Great display, with excellent backlight! So much better than the fluorescent style used in the RH-1, which was next to invisible in daylight.

Great build quality! Although the Sony was excellent as well, this feels solid, without being as "precious" as the Sony. I was constantly nervous about damaging the RH-1, it was just so delicate and refined.

Better cable access. The Sony unit I used seemed to sprout cables from every edge, impossible to find a case that would allow access to the main menu/display, and not crimp cables. This is much better, although I would have liked both the headphone output and the mic input to be on the same side, or even the top or bottom of the unit.

Instant start and stop! This thing stops immediately, and is ready to play the just-recorded track immediately. No downtime waiting for directory writing. Just Super!

Audio quality is quite good, although I'm not convinced it is as good as my old RH-1. I used SP almost exclusively, and was never disappointed in audio quality. If I need to go to PCM to match the MD format in quality, I will be less than thrilled with the LS10. I will be doing some recording this week using various external mics and settings to see if this provides the same level of field ambience as MD, at a reasonable level of sampling.

Built in 1/4" thread! How many times did I have to velcro, or tie the RH-1 onto a mic stand with rubber bands or straps, in an attempt to have the unit close to the performance!


Well, that's it for now. So the bottom line for me, at least in convenience, is that the Olympus has already improved my recording experience. We'll see how she does for performance over the next few weeks.

This post has been edited by pdxotica: Mar 3 2009, 09:51 AM

I am a linguist based in Italy, Europe. I use digital recording in the fieldwork in Africa. I am wondering whether I should buy an Edirol R-09 or an Olympus LS-10 (Edirol is 50 Euros cheaper here, by the way). I used Edirol, never tried the Olympus. One thing which bothers me is the possibility to adjust the recording level during the recording itself. With Edirol you can do it (with a thumbwheel), I have not undersood if you can do the same with Olympus. Can anybody help me? Thanks.

Just bought this, have a VERY loud show tomorrow night. I have a SPSB-8 Bass Roll Off Battery box along with SP-BMC-12 Deluxe Audio Technica Miniature Binaural microphones. Just want to confirm that I can use the LINE IN input for these. Any info is appreciated.

Thanks!

Don'you think that built-in speakers volume is very low?
My just complain is that this recorder has no voice/sound activation recording

This is a very good forum. Will you be reviewing the new LS-11. If so, any thoughts when?

Regards,

Cane