Often when new recording hardware is released on the public, the ideas that many of the items represent are great in theory but limited because some key applications just aren't possible yet. Such was certainly the case with handheld digital recorders for years; since first coming on the open market about seven years ago, digital recorders banked on being the newest exciting thing but didn't offer much beyond that novelty. Early handheld digital recording units were surprising rigid in their capability and application and – not just that – they didn't even do that job particularly well.
As a perfect example, I found out the hard way how frustrating and limited a digital recorder could be years ago when I received one as a gift. The unit was streamlined, slick and looked great, but looks proved to be deceiving; on its' best sound quality setting, it could capture about twenty minutes of very papery audio. It got worse as, upon playback, the unit would reset itself to zero after less than a minute if left on pause; thereby making the possibility of transcribing an interview cumbersome at best. Further, it was a sealed unit from an output standpoint; playback was utilitarian at best and the possibility of exporting a file from the unit to a computer was nonexistent. Needless to say, all of these constraints didn't make the unit particularly useful for journalism applications, and it was completely useless from a music recording standpoint. I voluntarily elected to work the “old fashioned way” for all of these reasons; I put the digital recorder on a shelf and happily continued to work with a tape recorder because they were easy to manipulate and virtually indestructible.
My avoidance of digital recorders remained the rule for years thereafter – until the Sanyo Xacti ICR-XPS01M arrived on my doorstep and easily blew every hand-held recorder I had ever used (no matter the format) out of the water both in application and playback quality.
Scanning the instruction manual reveals that the Xacti ICR-XPS01M was designed as an all-in-one unit for recording applications; it can be used by a musician to capture raw audio (i.e. making demos) or it can be used to capture line-in audio (i.e. recording telephone conversations or interviews). In either case, when users want to export a file from Xacti to a computer, the have the choice of exporting in mp3 or a linear PCM format for easy editing AND, true to the box the recorder came in, the file is of CD quality audio; one hell of a lot better than any handheld unit I've ever used before.
“So how good is the sound quality really,” you ask?
The Sanyo ICR-XPS01M makes good on its' claim and does produce files of excellent sound quality. For the purposes of this review, all audio (with the exception of that recorded on the telephone) was captured with the onboard microphones and the stock, out-of-the-box settings (again, with the same exception). This was done to give an example of the basic capabilities of the unit in a perfectly raw scenario and, even under such circumstances, the Xacti exceeded every expectation.
For live sound capture, a few different sources were used: an acoustically mute room (it just seemed right to make a 'bedroom tape' in the spirit of so many indie recordings) and an unadorned, high-ceiling room with natural reverb for piano. Here are a few samples of the results (please judge the quality of the recording, not the quality of the performing):
Xacti – voice capture
Xacti – guitar capture
Xacti – piano capture
Such capture and playback quality to be an attractive enough selling point for any touring performer that wants to demo and save an idea, but the ICR-XPS01M does have more options available to further polish that sound. Xacti features seven preset equalizers as well as three different “situation” present arrangements for microphone recording and another three settings for line-in recording. Each pre-set is a little different and can handily capture multiple sources at once (in a board meeting, for example), person-to-person “interviews” in person, and interview settings are also set up for recording over the phone.
A note on phone recordings: most splicer jacks available to record phone calls are limited in that they only produce monophonic playback recordings. What that means is, if you're recording a phone call, you're going to get some added digital distortion in playback. While not really a problem, it's always annoying. Happily, it's also reparable in files captured by Xacti; if you've got a Mac with Garageband (Sanyo doesn't recommend this – all instructions are for PC – but the Xacti is compatible with Mac), it is possible to easily manipulate the sound and minimize the distortion. Here's an example:
Xacti – phone test
Xacti – tweaked phone test
Fairly impressive right?
Needless to say, all of the improvements on audio capture that Sanyo has made and placed into the Xacti ICR-XPS01M an invaluable tool, but the deal gets sealed when one realizes that the unit offers a fantastic surplus of recording time (the microSD card included with the unit has 2GB of available space, which works out to a little over twenty hours of time) and a rechargeable lithium battery gives users an exorbitant amount of time per charge. With that kind of flexibility and functionality in hand, Xacti goes from being an attractive purchase to rending all other recorders obsolete; nothing on the market comes even close – especially at the manufacturer's suggested retail price of $149, the Sanyo Xacti ICR-XPS01M is a steal.
Further Reading:
sanyo.com/soundrecorder/
