Review on 🎙️ Capture Crisp Audio with the Olympus VN-702PC Voice Recorder by Andrew Schobinger

I've been using an audio cassette recorder for years to record various AM radio shows to later listen to. There are usually baseball games around this time of year, often ending late at night when I don't feel like going to bed. So I decided to finally step into the 21st century and work with a portable digital voice recorder. I was looking for several features: USB connection, external audio input and either a timer to turn off recording or a voice-activated recording function. The final feature is to stop recording at some point so I don't run out of memory to write long after I've finished the program I want. This recorder gives me all these features. The USB connection allows me to easily download an audio program if I want to save it or transfer it to another medium. I had to do some work to use the external audio input. My AM radio outputs "line level" tone, about 1 volt. The external audio input is for a microphone, which means that it is designed to receive sound at several millivolt levels. I couldn't find an audio attenuator with the right amount of attenuation at a reasonable price, so I made an attenuator cable with 40dB loss (reduces audio signal voltage by 100x). This is enough to meet the needs of an external microphone input. Then I activated the voice recording function. I already have an AM radio (and tape recorder) with a timer so the sound will mute at the set time. When the sound stops, the recording stops. However, please note that the VN-702PC will NOT turn off. It stays on and waits for the sound to turn back on. Aside from battery drain throughout the night (albeit slightly reduced in this standby mode), this isn't a problem. And since I use rechargeable batteries, that's not a problem either. There are other features I like. One feature that works well for recorded baseball games is custom skip forward. The standard commercial break during a baseball game is 105 seconds. I set the jump to 30 seconds. Three clicks of the fast-forward button and I was running through a 90-second commercial break in no time. An extra 15 seconds is just the ticket - it takes me some time to get the voice recorder out of my pocket and get to the fast-forward button.