Olympus DW-90 Digital Voice Recorder (Champagne Gold)

by Olympus

Product Details

Product Manual [505kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00005OBDS
• Item model number: DW90
• Batteries: 2 AAA batteries required. (included)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #126,033 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

Color: Olympus DW-90 Digital Voice Recorder (Champagne Gold)

From the Manufacturer

Olympus provides low-cost digital storage for voice recording in the DW-90. Built-in 8 MB flash memory provides ample space for short lectures and interviews, and three different recording choices--High Quality, Standard Play, and Long play--let you decide whether quality or quantity is most important for a given application.

The DW-90's battery life covers 19 hours of recording (11 for playback) on two AAA batteries. It's just over 3 inches long and 1.8 inches wide, so you can take it almost anywhere. The LCD provides important details such as remaining recording time, the date, and the time, as well as visual confirmation of voice activation mode, recording mode (HQ/SP/LP), and battery status.

The DW-90 also provides three folders to manage your files, each capable of storing up to 100 messages. A built-in unidirectional/telescoping microphone helps reduce background noise for clearer recordings, and a Microphone Sensitivity Selector lets you adjust the voice activation threshold for hands-free recording.

The DW-90 comes with a microphone stand, USB cable for quick copying of your files to your hard drive, hand strap for convenient carrying, earphones so you can listen to your recordings on the road, and Olympus's Digital Wave Player software.

Product Description

Students, journalists and business users alike can now record and download information to a PC with ease, and at an affordable cost, using the DW-90 digital voice recorder - a digital voice recorder with a PC connection for under $100. Features and BenefitsHigh-Speed USB interface for quick and easy downloading of audio files to a PC Provides three folders to manage your files, with each folder capable of storing up to 100 messages Three recording modes: High Quality, Standard Play, Long Play Microphone Sensitivity Selector and voice activation function allows for hands-free recording LCD display panel helps you keep track of important recording information Built-in uni-directional/telescoping microphone helps reduce background noise for clearer recordings The DW-90 comes with: microphone stand USB cable Earphones hand strap Olympus "Digital Wave Player" software

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Handy, lots of features, not enough space, October 30, 2001

By 

"themathguy" (Lebanon, OR United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Olympus DW-90 Digital Voice Recorder (Champagne Gold) (Office Product)

I really like this little recorder. It's quite small, has lots of features like 3 folders, voice activation, hold (so you don't accidentally press a button), unidirectional/omnidirectional recording (record from one direction or all directions), and good control over the files. It also has very easy-to-use USB connectivity to download the files to a computer. I has everything I need, except for one big problem. As the previous reviewer noted, the LP recording mode is hard to make out what's said. The best way of describing it is that most of the consonants are lost. Instead of hearing "Jim is going to the kitchen" you hear "Chim ith going do da gitchen", which makes LP mode rather useless. Which leaves me with SP (33 min) and HQ (22 min) modes. Don't get me wrong, SP sounds really good and HQ sounds crystal clear, but they just aren't enough time. I am a student and got this mainly for taking notes in class. And when a class is 50 minutes or more, 33 minutes of recording time just won't cut it. I'm sure that this recorder would work great for someone dictating, but it just doesn't cut it for students.

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, March 9, 2003

By 

David Sheppard "Novelsmithing" (Healdsburg, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Olympus DW-90 Digital Voice Recorder (Champagne Gold) (Office Product)

I purchased the Olympus DW-90 Voice Recorder to record ambient sounds for some web work I'm doing. I found the DW-90 easy to operate after browsing the manual. Loading the included software was a non-item. Once you record a sound you just plug the unit into a USB port and the software automatically pops up on the computer screen. You then push one button and it uploads the file or files to the computer. Fast, simple. You select the file (it records in .wav file format) with your mouse and hit the play button and there you are. I'm into recording sounds of doors creaking, birds chirping, water dripping, etc. I record outdoors and in, on the hiking trail, voices in the park, the crackle of a fire in a fireplace, children's voices. In short, I record anything that might make a digital scene come to life. I also use the sounds for link buttons: the ping of a pencil on a drinking glass or china, the crumpling of an aluminum can, fist on a tabletop. Once I've uploaded the sound, I open it in my sound editing software (Sound Forge) and go to work on it. The sound that comes from the DW-90 in HQ mode is crystal clear. Since it's designed to record voices, I was worried that it might muffle background noise, but found this to not be true. Everything the ear hears, the DW-90 records (not the same frequency response, of course), which can at times be a problem for me. Human hearing is selective, so we don't ordinarily hear the refrigerator running or whir of our computer's fan. But they will all be there when you replay a DW-90 sound file. The DW-90 is smaller than it looks in the pictures, ~3.5 inches in length, and extremely light weight, so you can take it anywhere. But it definitely has its limitations. File storage volume is one. Just make sure that prior to purchasing the unit you evaluate its specifications against your requirements. I'm immensely pleased with it, but then I'm not trying to record a one-hour lecture in HQ mode (limit 22 min) or LP mode (limit 90 min) where so many of the reviewers here on Amazon have complained about sound quality.

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A tiny, nifty little recorder, but ..., October 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Olympus DW-90 Digital Voice Recorder (Champagne Gold) (Office Product)

Highly recommended if you need no more than 33 minutes of recording time. Sound quality is reasonably good in HQ or SP mode, but recording time in these modes is limited to about 22 minutes & 33 minutes, respectively. Sound quality in the LP mode (90 minutes recording time) is so bad that this mode is really unusable for anything more than brief notes spoken directly into the microphone -- and even for that, the quality is "iffy" at best. PC software works well, and USB file transfers are quick and easy.

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