In fact, after years of wanting a digital recorder, I now use my iPhone. However, there are still some nice features on these new recorders from Sony that would make me look twice at getting one.

Obviously they’re digital. That means you can store a huge amount of audio on the solid state disk, with no fear of quality degradation. It’s all nicely indexed, so no fast forwarding and rewinding (unless you liked listening to high-pitched squeaking as you tried to find your place).

Claiming to be unique, these recorders feature three microphones. Two allow stereo sound to be recorded, while a powerful direction mic is in place for singling out distant speakers.

As well as long-record mode for cramming up to 1,505 hours on up to 4GB of memory, there’s Linear PCM mode for recording high quality music and other audio. As it’s all USB based, the devices can also be used as portable drives for other files.

Available in eight models of varying capacities and types of battery (either rechargeable or AAA) and bundled with digital voice editing software from Dragon.

Sony

I can see why it’s aimed at 3G S users, because when you’re video recording the built-in mic is angled the wrong way (given that in the past it’s only really been used for making phone calls and for playing ocarina).

This Mini Capsule mic is flexible so you can angle it where it’s needed. It has the added “advantage” that it makes your iPhone look a bit like an old-style cell phone with visible antenna. Yeah, like that’s a feature. The real feature is a claimed 10x better audio reception.

I’m sure we’ll see plenty of new ways of getting audio on to the iPhone as manufacturers make use of the improved dock connector, particularly as there are some kickass music creation apps available now. Some headsets also have decent mikes built in which are up to the task, but this is definitely one of the dinkiest solutions.

It’s only $14 too. Go grab it from Brando.

Via