Please please please let somebody release something that records at a higher quality! I read that you can record up to 670 hours of music on a 40GB iPod using the voice recorder. Let's see, that means about 16 Kilobytes per second for the sound. That's a VERY low-quality .wav file. And who the heck is going to record for a month straight anyway? Give me high-quality recording so I can have my portable music player and portable music recorder in one device! Until then, I'm sticking with my 1st-generation 5GB iPod.
I would say bump it up to 64 kbps maybe. I mean, for simple voice recording do you really NEED that high a bit rate? And if you were doing it in mono, 64 kbps would be pretty damm good.
Now if you wanted to use this bad boy to record shows (a la tapers at DMB shows), I can see your point. But I think a better set up for that would be a good stereo mic and a MiniDisk or DAT deck. This little dodad from Belkin gives people what they asked for...voice recording. I prefer this solution to jamming more stuff into the iPod and bulking it up. As always...my opinions are not those of this forum, it's members, or AI in general.
I think you'll find Apple has really only intended this for the recording of interviews and speeches, neither of which require anything beyond the current quality. There's also questions of battery life.
I would say bump it up to 64 kbps maybe. I mean, for simple voice recording do you really NEED that high a bit rate? And if you were doing it in mono, 64 kbps would be pretty damm good.
Now if you wanted to use this bad boy to record shows (a la tapers at DMB shows), I can see your point. But I think a better set up for that would be a good stereo mic and a MiniDisk or DAT deck. This little dodad from Belkin gives people what they asked for...voice recording. I prefer this solution to jamming more stuff into the iPod and bulking it up. As always...my opinions are not those of this forum, it's members, or AI in general.
Actually, it's recording at about 165 kbps. But kbps on MP3 is different than .WAV. I'm guessing that this is something in the vicinity of 22.1KHz, 8-bit recording. That's pretty crappy sound quality, if you ask me. I realize it's fine for recording a lecture or something.
I am not really asking for a bunch of stuff bulking it up. I'm asking if another company could make a recording device that offered better quality recording into the iPod. In essence, I'm asking if the limitation on sound quality when recording is a limitation of the Belkin device or the iPod itself. If it's a limitation of the Belkin device, there would be nothing stopping somebody from selling something similar in size to the Belkin device that allowed you to do higher-quality recording with your own microphone. I know a lot of musicians that drag around a minidisc recorder for this very purpose. Considering that minidisc recorders can do 48KHz, 16-bit recording, I'd think the iPod might be capable of something similar. The sad thing is that minidiscs have such annoying copy protection built-in. None of the portable recorders have digital out, which they should have so you can take your music and put it into your computer to edit. You have to find an older minidisc deck to find something with digital out... so you basically have to buy a recorder and a bigger unit - not just one unit. Plus, if you want to take your whole music collection with you, you need to bring a bunch of minidiscs with you. Having all the capabilities of the minidisc recorder in an iPod would rock my world.
Do you think the mini hard drive in the iPod could handle high quality recording?
Yes. It can play uncompressed WAV's directly from the drive (this is what used to happen with an early firmware that didn't support partially caching large files to the memory buffer). There's no reason why it couldn't record hifi quality audio directly to the drive as well.
I think you'll find Apple has really only intended this for the recording of interviews and speeches, neither of which require anything beyond the current quality.
What would be helpful now is a solution to download interview files and use voice recognition to turn them into text.
I can't believe Apple is so behind on this whole audio-in concept on the iPod. I am waiting patiently. The second an iPod with built-audio arrives I am selling my 5 gig and buying the new one.
Just for fun, take an AIFF file from a CD and convert it with to mono with an 8KHz sampling rate (It's already 16 bits) using iTunes. It's not pretty. I sure hope somebody comes out with an accessory better than this Belkin recorder, and soon.
Comments
Matthew
Now if you wanted to use this bad boy to record shows (a la tapers at DMB shows), I can see your point. But I think a better set up for that would be a good stereo mic and a MiniDisk or DAT deck. This little dodad from Belkin gives people what they asked for...voice recording. I prefer this solution to jamming more stuff into the iPod and bulking it up. As always...my opinions are not those of this forum, it's members, or AI in general.
I'd be rather surprised if Apple went any higher.
Originally posted by VanDeWaals
I would say bump it up to 64 kbps maybe. I mean, for simple voice recording do you really NEED that high a bit rate? And if you were doing it in mono, 64 kbps would be pretty damm good.
Now if you wanted to use this bad boy to record shows (a la tapers at DMB shows), I can see your point. But I think a better set up for that would be a good stereo mic and a MiniDisk or DAT deck. This little dodad from Belkin gives people what they asked for...voice recording. I prefer this solution to jamming more stuff into the iPod and bulking it up. As always...my opinions are not those of this forum, it's members, or AI in general.
Actually, it's recording at about 165 kbps. But kbps on MP3 is different than .WAV. I'm guessing that this is something in the vicinity of 22.1KHz, 8-bit recording. That's pretty crappy sound quality, if you ask me. I realize it's fine for recording a lecture or something.
I am not really asking for a bunch of stuff bulking it up. I'm asking if another company could make a recording device that offered better quality recording into the iPod. In essence, I'm asking if the limitation on sound quality when recording is a limitation of the Belkin device or the iPod itself. If it's a limitation of the Belkin device, there would be nothing stopping somebody from selling something similar in size to the Belkin device that allowed you to do higher-quality recording with your own microphone. I know a lot of musicians that drag around a minidisc recorder for this very purpose. Considering that minidisc recorders can do 48KHz, 16-bit recording, I'd think the iPod might be capable of something similar. The sad thing is that minidiscs have such annoying copy protection built-in. None of the portable recorders have digital out, which they should have so you can take your music and put it into your computer to edit. You have to find an older minidisc deck to find something with digital out... so you basically have to buy a recorder and a bigger unit - not just one unit. Plus, if you want to take your whole music collection with you, you need to bring a bunch of minidiscs with you. Having all the capabilities of the minidisc recorder in an iPod would rock my world.
Matthew
Originally posted by the cool gut
Do you think the mini hard drive in the iPod could handle high quality recording?
Yes. It can play uncompressed WAV's directly from the drive (this is what used to happen with an early firmware that didn't support partially caching large files to the memory buffer). There's no reason why it couldn't record hifi quality audio directly to the drive as well.
Originally posted by Telomar
I think you'll find Apple has really only intended this for the recording of interviews and speeches, neither of which require anything beyond the current quality.
What would be helpful now is a solution to download interview files and use voice recognition to turn them into text.
I can't believe Apple is so behind on this whole audio-in concept on the iPod. I am waiting patiently. The second an iPod with built-audio arrives I am selling my 5 gig and buying the new one.
Originally posted by tonton
New information from Belkin:
UGH.
Just for fun, take an AIFF file from a CD and convert it with to mono with an 8KHz sampling rate (It's already 16 bits) using iTunes. It's not pretty. I sure hope somebody comes out with an accessory better than this Belkin recorder, and soon.
Matthew
Originally posted by Frank777
What would be helpful now is a solution to download interview files and use voice recognition to turn them into text.
YES YES YES YES YES!!!! That would be the most amazing thing ever, almost. That would save me so much work.
one demo back in the early '90s had scotsmen, chinese, and yanks all step up and speak
no prior "training of voice required", ignored their widely varied accents, just worked.
sadly, despite such phoneme-powered vox rec, Apple never shipped a product.
Via Voice and Dragon Dictate came along and dominated the market.
I'd love to see what Apple has been cooking up all these years with what seemed superior engineering
that said, voice recognition takes a LOT of processing power.
won't ever happen from iPod's wee cpu itself.
but it's exactly the kind of work a G5 would eat for breakfast.
of course, tonally-dependent languages are easier to perform voice recognition on.
inflection per phoneme is distinct - as opposed to english where inflection can imply question -
(valley girl or teenager talk is an extreme example of this... every other word goes up in pitch)
pen recognition in stroke-based languages is easier to process as well...
stroke order, shape, and direction are unique to certain characters
and allow rapid decision tree for radical characters (as fast as graffiti-english)