Portable Digital Recorders

The Sony PCM-D50 is the ultimate digital voice recorder - there is only one shortcoming in my book - the use of Memory Stick. And that might not even be a problem for many.

Why is it amazing?

• It's signal to noise ratio - a measure of audio clarity - is 93dB.
• At its higest, the PCM-D50 will surpass DAT recording quality.
• It comes with 4 GB of memory built in - this is enough to allow approximately 6 hours at an excellent 48 Khz 16 bit recording (CD quality is 44.1 KHz and 16 bit)
• It records natually in WAV format - so transfer using the USB port is a breeze. There are no weird Sony proprietery formats to deal with here.
• There are 2 microphones available - this allows stero recording.
• The battery life is 14 Hours when recording CD quality  at 44.1 KHz/16  bit recording or 12 Hours at the highest quality format.
• The recorder is made of aluminum - not plastic.
• It has the same limiter as the D1 - meaning that if there is any clipping, the PCM-D50 will take a signal at -20dB down and use that. You won't get clipping unless you have an extreme problem.