Seems to me creating a fake animated VU meter would be nearly as much work as making a real one. It's almost as if the manufacturer is deliberately trolling people.

Wow. How you edit this video with sound is so nice. It gave me some idea about this product.

I think that someone in China has developed a chip(set) for DVRs and companies are massively using it in their own devices. I bought a $16 device which has EXACTLY the same characteristics, down to also having 2 microphones while recording mono, having exactly the same buttons, and the "press any button to turn on the light" feature, a telephone passthrough, a recording which is clipping, but in a completely different different case with a completely different screen.

The high quality sound setting is quite acceptable for a tenner. Handy tool for interviews etc on a tight budget.

Considering how much light comes out of the right mic cover from the LED I seriously doubt there's actually a microphone in there.

I'm sure the Zoom will be much better. I used the H4 for a while, and got good results from it. The Tascam DR-05 is a nice unit also.

Hi Julian! You could split the signal coming out of the vocoder in to a powered speaker and in to the line-in on your PC.

I have a $15 Tivdio V-115 FM/AM/SW radio that has record capability and I'm blown away at quality from line in Records to mp3 @ 192/44.1 on SHQ

No expense spared!

9:12 Audio doesn't work like that. The quality depends on two things: bitrate and sample rate. Bitrate is how many bits you use per sample. Usual numbers for this are 16 bit for CD audio and 24 bit for higher quality audio. The higher this number, the more dynamic range your audio has. Sample rate is how many samples per second you take. Typical numbers here are 44.1 kHz for CD audio and 48 kHz for high quality. This directly determines the highest possible frequency the audio can contain, the theoretical highest frequency you can have on a CD is 22.05 kHz. Of course for really high quality, you could go for 48 bit, 88.2 kHz, but since human hearing is pretty much limited at 20 kHz (and lower as you get older or have your car stereo full blast all the time (I hope you read this, neighbour)), you don't really need this, unless you want to do some serious audio editing. Now to calculate, to have a decent audio quality, you'll want to have 16 bit @ 44.1 kHz audio, which means you take a 16 bit sample 44,100 times per second, so you'll need a bandwidth of 705.6 kbits/s per channel. If the recorder is recording at 384 kbits, then that's either recording at 16 bit @ 24 kHz or 8 bit @ 48 kHz. Either way, not very high. If it's 24 kHz, it might be enough for voice recordings, but you'd still be missing out on higher pitches, such as s or f sounds (which I think is audible in this example). If it's 8 bit, you'd have a 'grainier' sound, more compressed than what you'd expect. I don't hear that, so I will assume what you get out of this recorder is 16 bit audio with a sample rate of 24 kHz. I'd say good enough for your vocoder project, but not for any serious audio recording.

Hi Julian, the comparison of audio by superposition was not really showing how different the quality was. Can you play say 5 or 10 seconds of quality audio, then play the same 5 to 10 seconds of recorded audio, so we can hear the difference.

Is this what it always sounds like in your head, Julian. ;) That's not a bad little recorder.

I have one of these recorders since 2016 and I have been using it to ocassionally record lessons in a classroom. I have always noticed there was something like small failures (like discontinuities of 1 second every now and then) in these recordings but never minded until trying to use it to record some audio to provide a decent alternative to internal mics on video cameras (since the quality is quite good). In HQ settings my recorder presents a failure around 3:15 minutes, it's like it misses a second of recording. Remarkably when recording at the lowest quality the same kind of failure appears much earlier. I somebody can check this out with his recorder...

Do you know a way to "reset" the recorder? I have no display and was hoping there was a way to reset it and maybe get the display to appear.

I have that same recorder, works very well, I bought it three years ago, still working just fine. Mine have this firmware (you can see that in the menu) : 2016/01/27 1.1.00 2013/02/07 AS331C_V1000, I don't know if yours is different. Thanks for sharing !

If you plug in a line level device that's outputting stereo audio and record it on this recorder is it in stereo?

How about some sample WAVs? thank you!

Love the important notice at 1:40 but it seems a bit back to front !!

I don't like the audio quality but this looks like something simple enough for my dad to use. I got him a simple mobile phone that does recording but he doesn't do menus. He needs the basic play/record/stop/ff/rew buttons he's used to. Do you have the link for the Ebay auction please?

Well, what a surprise! (I got this video totally randomly in recommendations.) I have one of this recorder for few years now (only difference is mine is brown) and my experience is: 1, Battery life is excellent! I can use it for a long time before it needs to recharge. 2, Built in microphones are not the"best", really easy to overdrive them (get distorsion), so I always use an external microphone (just simply an electret microphone on a mono jack)! 3, Storage usage is really good! Now it contains all recordings since I got it and the used space is still under 1 GB out of the total 4 GB! 4, It actually can record in stereo, too (I not tried it yet). Look for an option like "HQ REC" or "Fine REC" in "Record type" menu. 5, User interface translation is not the best, it really feels like Google translate... :/ 6, I not recommend the included microphone! It's cheap as possible. Mine was not built properly, I was unable to get any sound with it (if I remember correctly), so I "get rid of it" pretty quickly. 7, File transfer is really easy! Just connect it to a PC and the built in storage just shows up as a USB drive. Conclusion: it's cheap, but actually quite useable. :)

The "telephone record" mode is probably intended for use with magnetic pickups that you stick to your telephone handset, not sure if they even make them any more...

Is it possible to monitor sound as it is being recorded using earphone or headphones?

I got my ZOOM H1 for £10 at a boot sale. Its now malfunctioning when I connect it to the computer via USB.. not sure if it still works :/

is there any way to transfer the recordings to a computer? I am hookinh it up to my PC and can't find a single way to do it

Mine has stopped connecting to the pc for transfer. I do get the option when I am in play back mode but still not recognized

Not sure about the fidelity of that little recorder, if you have another tenner spare I would give a USB audio capture card a go like the 'Easy-Link USB Audio Capture Card' on amazon or 'USB 2.0 Neostar Audio Capture Device' on Ebay - Still that recorder may well be better than nothing.

not the first time I see you have the same 'toys' I have 😁 mine didn't come with any accesories though

Not sure why you are bothering with MS MovieMaker when OBS Studio is free?

Can recordings be downloaded to a pc or something of the sorts?

i think you will need some more high frequencies then the first recording for testing your vocoder .second was much better. what was the cut off frequency of the highest filter ? and uhms... loose the mic i think. another thing julian. when you start testing the vocoder it could be a usefull device for the input too. gives you a reliable base sample to see how the controls react.

How do you delete some recorded files in it?

Yessss I absolutely love these kind of review, thanks for making it. BTW great video keep up the good work.

I also have one of these, but there is a problem with mine. If I set the date and time, it doesn't save it in the filename and also when you turn off the machine it resets itself to default 2014 year. It is infuriating.

Movie Maker??!

Hi, I think that there is no such thing as left microphone and right microphone. On the back of the box it says clearly : Recording via high grade built-in microphone with NO s. Then I presume that there's just one micrphone.

Ist da auch einRauschen für gohst hunting?

You should try "shotcut" free video editor

Is it good for EVPs? or for ghost hunting?

Thanks. I have the same exact one I purchased a year ago on Amazon. There are no instructions on how to recharge the battery. Could someone here help me out with this please?

test it with a boom mic or external mic

I think the main lack of quality is probably cheap A-D converters on record then cheap D-As and no audio gain is why you get distorted audio. May be you could whisper? Or buy a cheap cassette recorder, might even sound better.

Does anyone know how to activate v o r ?

If you use davinci resolve you can align an external audio track automatically. BTW i got my zoom H2 for cheap off ebay. Oh and the quality was shocking compared to your standard mic lol

I've had one for a couple of years and I can hear what voices are saying when it plays a file, but when I play the file on a PC it's so over-driven it's hard to hear what people are saying. I usually record comedy shows from the back of the room in my pocket it's so sensitive, yet it still too loud. Can't get to keep the date either.

Why not get a Tascam DR-05. their very decent recorders. not £10 mind you but you can get one used on ebay for a very cheap price. or £90 brand new on amazon by looks of it the recording of that thing sounds pretty bad. Hopefully it sounds better with a diff mic attached

Brand name plz

No card or card errior soulation?

Why not record LINE-IN using your computer?

Morning..

175k subscribers and uses Movie Maker... I love this!

Teardown!

Interesting. Do you think that this is one of those "you get what you pay for" things? I'm pretty sure that there must be some pretty good economy recorders out there; of course the trick is finding them. Add the fact that the quality of the microphone(s) can make a huge difference.

Great video. I was looking to buy one of these. Just an observation about the left and right mics. I think they would be useful if you were recording an interview across the table like how the zoom works. I use Movavi video suite. It works well on my win 7 laptop, 4Gb memory. I paid less than £50 after using the trial. You get a great true screen recorder as well as a brilliant editing suite. You can split the audio/ video tracks very easily. If you like it then search for discount code links from movavi.com

Does it have a mic in? If so, is that stereo possibly?

why not just use line-in (blue port usually) on a PC & audacity ?

I don't get it. £30 gets you something cheap and nasty like a Behringer U-Phoria UM2 USB Audio Interface which nonetheless will get you 48kHz quality audio delivered direct to your PC over USB to be saved in any audio format you want. You've already spent more than that on the two of these things you've bought....

Sounds like it's using the speaker as a microphone.....it's an old trick but it just might work.

Comment effacer les clips enregistrés devenus inutiles?

THE ECHO'S ARE SUPER, LOVE TO HEAR IT ECHO, ECHO, ECHO THROUGH THE THE VID.... LOLLLLLLLLL

No charger available in packing so how to charge it

Why don't you just use the line-in on your PC?

This is recorded on sticky tape and rust

May your transistors terrify, your diodes disgust, and your resisters revolt!... have a hideous halloween!

Card errors

Mistake

Buy a cheap audio recorder and you get poor quality audio. I have a Zoom H1 and it runs rings around that piece of tat! Go for the Zoom, Julian.

Please just buy a decent recorder. These cheap things that don't even do their job shouldn't exist

Sorry, but sounds terrible. You have 175k subs, I think you can try a more decent one for 1/200pounds