I've been trying to use an Olympus VN 240 PC to record bird songs. The only purpose I have is to aid in bird id. Therefore I don't want to carry a large device. The recorder works ok if the bird is close and the frequency is not too high. I have tested it from 3000 Hz to 10000 Hz. It only reproduces well up to about 3500 Hz. Thanks to Julian Sellers I now understand that the "sampling rate" of the device is important as is the frequency sensitivity of the microphone. I found out that the VN 240 PC has a sampling rate of 22000 by looking at the properties of the wav file that it generated. So, in theory, I should have been able to record up to 10000 Hz. I don't know why this didn't work.
I also did the frequency test on an IPOD (4th generation) with a Griffin I-Talk attached. This attachment has a microphone and small speakers. Unfortunately, it has a sampling rate of 8000 so it was even worse than the recorder. It can record only to 4000Hz I also read the Yahoo - Birding Peru list. Someone there had suggested that she had thought to buy an Olympus WS-100 voice recorder to use for bird id. I checked their website and found that it has a sampling rate of 44,000/sec. I bought the WS-100 this morning and tested it. It reproduced all frequencies up to 10000 Hz. Sampling rate was indeed 44,000. So it's a keeper for me. The downside for some might be that they created WMA files which can't be modified by audio software. This isn't a problem if you can convert wma to wav (non-compressed). The audio allows you to amplify, deamplify or cut out parts of the recorded file. The other issue I have with the recorder is that the batter cover can open too easily - I'm sure it's going to open some day out in the field. I may have to tape it shut. I still haven't tested it on yellow warblers. That's next. If it can do yellow warblers then it can do anything. Larry S
