Sony ICDUX70 Digital Voice Recorder MP3 Stereo Recording and Playback

I bought this model for recording public meetings and posting to my blog. The unit's ability to pick up sound is phenomenal, even at the lowest setting. I made 10 recordings of a three hour meeting. But it was difficult to select the folder or file that I wanted that segment to go into. Then it was more time consuming later to track which file contained which section. I had made a list as the meeting went on, trying to denote at least the time signature for each part. It would have been better if I could have had more control over selecting which folder the sound went into.
If the file naming were easier to do, it would have saved time. That was my first attempt, so it could have been my ineptitude more than the model's design. It was extremely easy to upload the files and, since there's no conversion necessary, you can simply edit in audacity, if necessary, and post to your blog.
I've already recommended this model to friends as a great recorder for this price.
Maureen - Asbury Radio

I lovethis product! The other reviews claimed the product could not turn off, but there is a power switch, the hold button makes it turn off so the battery does not wear out. Product was in excellent condition. I would buy more from this vendor.

I bought the ICDUX70 to record debates, and it works great. The two features I was most interested, this one has: it records directly into .mp3 (not into some proprietary format like most Olympus' do), and data transfer works as a USB flash drive (not requiring some proprietary Windoze/Mac software). These two features mean that the ICDUX70 works like a champ with Linux (Ubuntu 7.10)!

I was also surprised how well this recorder works for podcasting (that is to say, listening to podcasts). The "easy-search" feature (10sec fwd or 3sec rev per button press) is more useful than a silent ffwd/rev, and (for catechism memorization), the A-B feature is super helpful. I haven't used for typing yet, but the DPC (digital pitch control -- slow down the speed without distorting the voice) works great.

The unit is smaller and lighter than I expected, but seems well made enough. The little endcap over the USB connector is pretty cool, but I bet I'll eventually lose it. Battery life is good -- I've had it for over a month now, recorded a debate, and listened to probably 20-30 hours of podcasts, and I'm still on the factory-supplied battery (a single AAA).

My one quibble (the only thing that my crappy old RCA Lyra did better) is folder/file management. When you create and nest folders to organize your .mp3 from the perspective of your computer, those hierarchies disappear from the perspective of the machine -- it's just a long list of all the folders that contain .mp3 (in creation order). And when you go into a folder, you cannot see the _names_ of the files, so if you have no id3/id4 tags, you can't tell what's what. Also, there's no shuffle mode for playback, and no concept of a 'playlist', so if you want a device for listening to music, this is probably not it.

But it's good at what it's made for, i.e. recording and playing back speech.

As many of the people have stated, the internal speaker is pretty useless but the supplied earphones sound just fine and using some really nice headphones make the playback sound great. I purchased this because I wanted high-quality recordings since I am using it to capture sound effects and voice for my interactive projects. I was expecting the internal mic would be complete garbage (like most recorders) and assumed that I would always need to use an external mic but it actually does a pretty good job just with the built-in mic. The file system works well and plugs right in using a USB connection. The files are a lot easier to work with than Sony HD MiniDiscs (what I used to use for this). I'm very pleased with the quality of the recordings. This could easily be used for podcasting.

To be honest, my only gripe is with the MP3 playback. Since the recorder is also designed to be used as an MP3 music player, it might have been nice if they had added a random play option. Certainly not a deal breaker but something I hope they consider for their next model.

For $100 (or less) this is a great recorder and I consider it worth the money.

The interface isn't user friendly, the sound quality is lower than a comparably priced product form Olympus I think, and it only worked one day before frying out. There's no reset. Big mistake. I'm taking this thing back tomorrow.