I've been using one, the Olympus DM-720, for a few weeks now and overall its
very nice, but does have some short-comings and regressions from the 620 and
520.
I've been doing recordings and getting stuff in place to create a podcast, and
haven't found anything else out there with a lot of detail.
Audio quality is very nice for voice, finally using the central mic feels like
it blends well, - though there is some noise floor, but personally I like its
voice capture quite a lot.
Unlike earlier dm units, this has no Audible.com support, no podcast folder,
though it does have a music folder.
Sadly user settable recording scenes have been omitted, and the in-built
recording scenes all do a poor MP3 encoding.
I tend to record in Wave, as even the 320 MP3 encoder sounds fuzzy around 's's
etc.
From extensive testing I have set on the following for quality voice capture:
1. Record to wave 44.1
2. set recording to manual levels and set to around 15, just before the audible
notch
You can use low level setting, but I think this gives slightly less quality,
perhaps due to the limiter circuit.
I choose this lower recording level to get a good balance of vocal clarity and
limited capture of ambient noise from afar.
3. I hold the machine vertically, in front of my chest, three or so inches out
from my sternum, resting my inner fore-arm against my ribs. Find something
comfortable. - this minimises any breath noises and popping.
4. to minimise handling noise, I press the record button and then leave my
finger on the button. Then I can pause and resume recording with minimal noise
in the recording. You can almost get a silent edit this way.
5. To end the recording I first press record to pause, then I move to either
the stop key or the OK key if I want to immediately hear the recording back.
The DM-720 runs off a single triple A battery and this means the in-built
speaker is smaller and tinnier.
Headphone output levels are quite low, workable, but not ideal if you record at
lower levels and plan to normalise later on.
The face of the unit is near identical to the DM 620 and the LS-7
Some nice new features are audible notching (sound cuts out for a fraction of a
second) on the speed control when you are at 1.0 and at two points in the 30
step manual recording level adjustment.
It also has an interesting transcription playback mode that does audible cue
and review, as well as a very aggressive feature called voice balancer that
brings up low levels on playback.
There is a new recording mode that is a really intense automatic gain control,
which is nice for some voice capture situations.
The attachable clip is quite nice, meaning you can have the unit clipped inside
your pocket for ready access, but without it flopping around against keys etc.
Finally, setting date and time can now be done independently.
Overall I love it as a personal voice capture device even though it has some
short-comings as I've described.
Happy to answer any other questions.
Regards
Tim
Tim Noonan
Consultant Speaker Coach
Phone: +61 419 779 669
Email: t...@timnoonan.com.au
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On 9 Jun 2016, at 2:24 PM, Jim Portillo wrote:
Hi there,
Has anyone used the new Olympus dm-720 recorder? If so, I'd like to know
any tips or words of advice for using it.
Have any podcasts been done on it yet?
Jim
