I have just received the Olympus LS-10 and have been putting
it through the paces. This is one beautiful little piece of equipment!

The LS-10 has a heavy duty feel to it, similar to the PCM-D50
but of course is much, much smaller.

It has a superb MENU system, with options to adjust
REC MODE, REC LEVEL, ZOOM MIC, REC MONITOR,
PLUG IN POWER, six adjustment options for PLAY MODE,
along with REVERB and something called EUPHONY for
atmospherics.

Other options include BACKLIGHT, CONTRAST, and LED
ON/OFF

I have not had a chance to compare it with the SONY
yet, but brief testing yielded very good recordings, with
the MIC SENS switch a critical aspect. However, the is
a RECORD thumbwheel control, similar to the SONY,
and you can adjust for MANUAL or AUTO in the MENU
options.

Assuming there is no limit on the SDHC capacity,
one could easily stick 32 GB in there with no
problem. Two observations:

-- Hand movement noise is a problem, with the
twin MICS picking it up, similar to the Zoom H2 and
SONY.

-- At first, I was not pleased with the placement of
the SD door, which seemed far too close to the
left hand VOLUME control thumbwheel. However, I
now realize it's not that bad -- the SD cover is of
the rubber type (obviously they didn't want to have
these things breaking off by making them out of
hard plastic) and it works well.

I played a number of files on this through a very good
speaker system and am impressed again. I believe
Olympus has produced a piece of equipment here that
will be very popular and compete extremely well at
this price point ($348 advance from Sound Professionals)

As these are now being shipped, I look forward to hearing
from others about their experiences with the very
nice LS-10.

Thanks for the detailed report! Our review unit is on the way to Mark Nelson, who did all six of our previous recorder reviews, so I'm looking forward to hearing what he discovers as well. I played with the LS-10 at NAMM and agree it felt solid.

Here's a photo:
 olympus_LS_10_Left_sm.jpg ( 25.15K ) Number of downloads: 14

Do you know if the Ls-10 has the capability to set variable length automatic track markers to enable the user to jump through long recordings?

Thanks... Tom

The manual is online; I skimmed it and didn't find a marker function. The device does have the ability to set temporary A and B markers in a file and loop playback between them, though.

Yes I am interrested with this since it has different micophone patterns, metal frame, wind screen and case included. No speed control or phantom power that I can see for use with bigger mics. However I am still interested in this unit. THere has been a few sound samples on the web but not enough to determine basic sound quality with classical instruments.

one more thing the SONY has a fancy limiter but only works at 16bits

I think that's intentional. One of the advantages of recording in 24-bit resolution is that you get so much more headroom that you may not need a limiter: You can record at a low enough level to allow for peaks while still capturing enough bits to provide a high signal-to-noise ratio. In fact, at the Game Developers Confrerence last week, I heard a professional voiceover producer describing how he did just that.

It's worth pointing out that this is only partially true -- most of these small consumer recorders do not have good enough mics, analog signal paths, or AD converters to make this strategy a really good one in sensitive situations. Recording at low levels in very dynamic environments will result in an unacceptably high noise floor in the quieter passages. For things like lectures and classes that won't be an issue, but it's something to keep in mind if field or music recording is the intended use.

A related gotcha to beware: the digital limiter. My Zoom H2 has one but it's not worth much; the role of a real limiter is to gracefully reduce transient peaks before they reach the AD converter; limiting as a DSP process is cheap (no additional hardware required!) but it's trying to avoid a problem after the damage is done... the signal will already be audibly compromised. :/

best regards,
aaron (a field recordist)

Very good point, Aaron. Thanks. I left out the standard "other things being equal" disclaimer. The voiceover example I cited above was conducted in a professional recording studio with high-end gear.

In fact, for most of the inexpensive recorders we've tested, reviewer Mark Nelson found little advantage to using higher-resolution settings (particularly high sampling rates).

I love your Quiet American site, by the way. Nice to see you here.

Has anyone tried the LS-10 with an external, unpowered mic yet? How are the pre-amps?
Cheers, Jake

I haven't read anything about the plug-in power, but today on the Naturerecordists Yahoo group, Oryoki had this to say:

"I haven't found time to complete writing of my review. Let me say that the preamp of the LS-10 is pretty good, about the same as the Marantz PMD620 and other small recorders. But it's not in the same league as the Fostex FR-2LE or other full-size recorders.

In fact, I think the Sony Hi-MD preamp is still the best small machine for nature recording (where high gain and low sound pressure levels are common). The Sony PCM-D50 is very good, but a lot larger."

aaron

I have been using my Olympus LS-10 for a couple of days now. It is a well-made, well-thought-out little machine, except for one thing.

The LS-10's Line-in jack has relatively high impedance compared to other compact recorders, and I was certainly disappointed when using the Olympus in conjunction with Sonic Studios DSM mics and PA-3SX pre-amp. The levels remained very low, even when recording loud sounds with every setting on pre-amp and recorder set to maximum.

If you want to make a lot of recordings using external mics and external preamps, then the Olympus LS-10 is probably not a good first choice.

This post has been edited by Ian Rawes: Apr 10 2008, 09:39 AM

The specifications for the LS-10 state that the built in mics have a frequency response of 70Hz to 20kHz. That's the only real reason that I think it may not be the perfect recorder for me.
All the sample recordings I've heard sound a little lacking in the low frequency area, which makes perfect sense for a voice recorder, but I need the full audio spectrum (and beyond, please).
both
http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-rec...nd-samples.html
and
http://www.startstop.com/ls10_samples.html
have a number of good samples to listen to.
The Wingfield page really shows the LS-10's lack of low end response in direct comparison to numerous other recorders.

Also, any reports of a maximum SPL recording with the LS-10?

I'm still tempted to try one out despite the low frequency issue (maybe a mod could fix that?), really looks like an excellent device.

Damion

Here's what they have to say on the Wingfieldaudio site:

"After reviewing the manual again, we realized that we didn't give the LS-10 a fair chance with our first posted cello sound sample. The manual recommends setting the mic sensitivity to 'LOW' for "indoor musical performances." We had it set to HIGH. Hear the difference".
(Scroll down to Sound Quality/Microphones to play recorded examples)

The LS-10 has a Low Cut Filter that you'll want to turn off to get low sounds. Still, while the low content is there, its not flat all the way down so some EQ will help.

Also just found this podcast about and recorded on the Olympus LS-10.

It was really bothering me as to whether the LS-10 was recording low sounds properly or not so I did some tests. I recorded a sequence from my speakers with both the LS-10 and a Sanken CMS-7 $3,200 mic. Both files have WaveArts Noise reduction but there is no EQ. Here are the results:

The LS-10
 LS_10.mp3 ( 249K ) Number of downloads: 53

The Sanken CMS-7 @127 degree setting
 CMS_7_127deg.mp3 ( 246.56K ) Number of downloads: 39

As you can hear, the LS-10 does capture the lows as well as the Sanken. And the LS-10 holds itself up quite well to the ten times more expensive Sanken. Both files are brighter than the original and this is due more to my speaker anomalies (or that the mics were aimed at tweeters). However, the biggest difference to me though is the stereo spread. The LS-10 doesn't quite capture the spread that the Sanken does (both mics were in the same location). And even the Sanken didn't quite capture the full spread of the original ambience.

The LS-10 does have a Wide Zoom mic setting, although this only works when set to 16-bits. I'll have to look into this further. However for field recording, I'm personally more interested in 24-bits (due to the "forgiving" extra headroom).

My conclusion is the LS-10 low end is OK (and can be boosted easily with EQ). The limited stereo spread in the 24-bit mode makes an optional stereo mic with MS adjustments worth exploring to extend its capabilities. Obviously the Sanken is a bit expensive to drag around so an alternative low-cost mic I'd like to explore is the Sony ECM-MS957 which has a street price of around $195. Has anyone tried the LS-10 with this external mic?

Simply as a field recorder though, the Olympus LS-10 totally rocks with its 24-bits, built-in 2G, SD card slot (I have 8G), small form factor and the fact that its built like a Nagra.

Thanks for the samples.
I went ahead and got myself one for less than $300 on ebay.
I haven't had much chance to fully test it, but so far I'm totally please with my decision to get it.

I was concerned with problems recording really loud stuff and it seems to be able to handle stuff just fine if the recording level is way down.

I used the frequency response curve in the documentation to make an EQ plugin preset to compensate for the roll off, and that works pretty well.

The 4 second startup is excellent. I also like how the stop button doubles as a nice LARGE clock and status indicator...

One bummer is how loud pressing any button is during recordings, especially the record button.
Pushing the record button while recording pauses and restarts the recording and you can actually
make a stream of edits in a sequence this way (it seems to respond as fast as you can push the button), but the loud clicks of the button kind of ruin that..

The biggest problem I've had is the wind and vibration sensitivity, but that's normal for any sensitive mic.

The WMA capability is useless to me, I'll never use it, but the MP3s sound pretty decent and might be useful. DSD recording would be way cooler.

I found this cool Olympus sponsored LS-10 site:
http://olympus-imaging.jp/product/audio/special/linearpcm/
It's only in Japanese, but there are several nice 24/96 wavs on there if you click around...

There's also this bird recordings page that is mostly recorded with an LS-10 (all of the most recent stuff):
http://pikanakiusagi.web.fc2.com/new.html
maybe an english version of the page in there somewhere...


Damion

Our Olympus LS-10 review is now online. Thanks for all your comments; we read them while working on the review.

Do you think the Olympus LS-10 is good for recording and them making CD recordings? I have a need to make CD's and would like to know what is best for that. Would I need software to change the formats?

Thanks
Steve

Steve: CD-burning software (Toast, Easy Media Creator, Nero, iTunes, etc.) can accept a wide variety of audio file formats. In the end, though, CDs are 44.1kHz, 16-bit stereo uncompressed, so whichever recorder you use, recording at 44.1kHz, 16-bit WAV format would require the least number of alterations.

On the other hand, there's something to be said for capturing audio in the highest possible resolution for archival purposes. That's the theory behind the Korg MR-1 we reviewed, which records at 256 times the CD sampling rate. As we've noted, however, the analog components in these small recorders may act as a bottleneck. You're not likely to hear much difference between 44.1 and 96kHz if the built-in mics and preamps don't either, and the higher resolution will require significantly more storage space.

"Best," of course, is a term only you can define. It depends on your budget, recording skills, the type of music you're recording, and many other factors. Let us know what's important to you and we'll try to help.

I will need this device to create CD's for clients. Voice and music in the background. So you think the Korg MR-1 Hi-Def Portable would be a better device to do this? Like I said it is for voice, with soft music in the background. Don't have the need to create good music recordings.

Thanks for your help,
Steve

This post has been edited by sjm1027: May 24 2008, 07:45 PM