I must say, my dear Lord Lucan, I’m perturbed by your eagerness to seek out such a device as it leaves me wondering just what the hell you plan to do with it. Should I be wary that all drunken conversations be taped on my next return visit? I understand there may be some interest in testing the wild theory that all our conversations have been uttered before, but since no one could remember them like players in some ugly Ground hog day we’re doomed to repeat them each and every Friday night, but I’m not eager to go that way.
[quote=“Lord Lucan”]WOW! Looking at a website that is charging three times the price of having one sent over from the USA. I kid you not. Go to this comedy website and then price the same thing at B&H Photo including UPS at US$35. Then really scare yourself by going to a discount site!
Some things in Taiwan are insanely expensive. Oh well.
xtrain, was the recording quality on yours good enough for voice recognition software? What model did you get exactly? You don’t happen to know what the bitrate and format of the highest quality recording is?[/quote]
if you go to “other” on the site you listed, the 5133 is listed there at $2980, and the specs are all there too. i used it to do thesis interviews - did all the transcribing myself.
one nice feature is that it automatically shuts down if no one is talking, so you don’t get all kinds of empty spots to skip through.
Thanks to those that helped me try and find a reasonably priced recorder in Taiwan. I ended up going for the Olympus DS-2 as I have this naiive idea that the promises that Dragon Naturally Speaking can transcribe the recordings holds a degree of truth. The DS-2 got highest marks for quality for this purpose. And it makes 128kbps 44.1kHz stereo wma files. Whatever they are.
Anyway, I paid US$110 at B&H Photo plus a whopping US$40 for UPS Express postage, which arrived on the fourth day. Taiwan tax and import duty (which UPS will always pay) was NT$402. So it was quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent Olympus product in Taiwan.
It seems to have survived its tour around the world from China to New York to Anchorage to Taiwan quite nicely. I hear Sky TV is going to show a series about two intrepid consumer electronics products who go around the world from China to Taiwan, the Wrong Way Round, inside a UPS tuk-tuk. Should be good.
Yes, HGC. This is for recording you when you go “the drinks are on me!” or “don’t worry - everything’s going to be all right - I’ve been here before”.
That thing with the nanny was all bunkum, BTW. I had been living in Wexford since 1978. They’re all mad down there anyway so no-one noticed.
Most MP3 players have bullshit built in microphones. You’d think they’d make one that’s good for recording but I have yet to find it. My suggestion: find something that has a jack for an external microphone, you’ll get immensely better quality that way.
Best place for anything like this in Taipei is a shop located 2 blocks from EXIT 6 at Ximen. Its a small shop that only sells recording med such as DAT, K7, open reel, DVD, CD, MD and some rare formats. The shop is owned by a couple that have been there for years. He is Taiwanese and his wife is from Japan. They also have a very nice selection of micro-cassette and digital recorders. ALL are imported from Japan.