Customer Reviews

Panasonic RR-US360 Digital Voice Recorder

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

After reading other reviews and shopping around I elected to buy a Panasonic RR US360. I am very happy with the ease of use, size, and clarity. However, I will NOT recommend this item to anyone due to the extreme difficulty I have had trying to download the recordings to my Dell D600 using Win 2000. What you do not learn until you have purchased and possibly used the item is that Win 2000 will not recognize the device and you are told to access it via the VoiceStudio software that comes with the item. Great, except it has not worked and doesn't recognize the USB port, much less the device. I have tried contacting Panasonic help and I strongly recommend anyone thinking of purchasing one of these to call them at 1-800-211-7262 and cycle thru the options (1,4,2,7) as given to me by the 'audio technician' to get help with the US360. The minimum wait time I have encountered is 21 minutes, but have yet to get a resolution and having been told I would be called and left my number, after 2 weeks I have yet to be called, have sent in emails via their web, and have not received any response. Panasonic again, absolutely NOT!!!! Call for yourself before buying and save yourself the frustration later.

I am satisfied with the sound of this small voice recorder. However, I cannot install the Voice Studio software onto my computer. I noticed the problem at Circuitcity.com, and thought that was associated with Windows 98. However, I am using Windows ME. I have not had any problems with any other software. Therefore, be aware that this recorder may not work on your computer as well. I am giving a two star rating because 1) the claimed selling point is not working. 2) Panasonic has terrible customer service with this product. No support information on this product on their website. No response to e-mail inquiries. Called them, I was put to wait for 40 minutes and then kicked out. Their customer service let me feel angry.

Very good quality sound recorder for professional (but non-jounalistic) use: dictation of ones ideas, taking interviews, recording what people say at trade fairs etc...
Takes good enough recordings of very long seminars at low quality settings (up to 8 hours), good meeting recording and interviews at medium setting (4 hours) and excellent recordings at dictation setting. However the latter means only 2h20minutes so you need a portable in the neighbourhood for transferring files so that you can delete and continue recording in this mode. The quality is good without a mic but is even better with a small directional mic that one holds in the direction of the interviewees (especially in noisy environments)
The major weak point is the file transfer soft. Voice Studio recently replaced by Voice Editor is a strange software. One has to stay within the program to transfer files to and from the recorder but also between storage devices. Using simple microsoft copy/pasting of files ruins the whole storage system and audio files become unreadable. So one has to make virtual disk-structures to copy onto backup storage devices. The advantage though is that within the Software one can do a lot with the audio file and if the data is sensitive, a common thief cannot do much with a lost/stolen storage diskette since they will need the panasonic software to listen to the content.
However manipulating the files within the software is easy and has some neat functions if one has to transcribe interviews: dividing of long recordings (so that they become more easy to transcribe or organise in subject classes), gluing two files together, flags in the files etc. Conversion to WAV is possible so one can copy the recordings to CD and play the interviews again on a walkman device.
For non-professionals I find the transmission of audio files to friends via e-mail very awkward: one has to send an replay-exe with the audio files which is a bugger now that everybody has a firewall.

Practically everything I own is Panasonic - rice maker, home entertainment system, vaccum cleaner, clock radios. I have three of their older voice recorders and this RR360. The device is great. What isn't great is their software. It's hideous. It's worse than hideous, it's the worst commercial software I've seen in a long time. It's the only package I know of that consistently bluescreens Windows 2000 Pro. I'd love to update it to the latest version and see if that helps, but when I use the VoiceStudio Help -> Update menu it stupidly tells me that VoiceStudio is not installed on my computer. They do not offer the software for download separately, you can supposedly only upgrade it through their menu. All attempts to contact Panasonic tech support are fruitless. The recorder uses a proprietary format and they don't release specs so you can't use it with Linux, older Windows versions or future Windows versions - just the ones out now. Right now I've got a rather important 2 hour meeting stored on it that I can't upload because every time I try it bluescreens the two computers I've got their software installed on. I'm going to have to capture the analog audio as a .wav file.

I'm a huge Panasonic fan, but don't buy this one because they won't let you get to your own data and they won't respond to requests for tech support on it.

I totally agree with Jeff. In fact, I wish he wrote his review before I purchased the RR-US360! My laptop has Windows XP and I can't download the driver either. Windows doesn't recognize the device and I can't even manually install the driver from the CD. I keep getting:

The specified location does not contain information about your hardware

Customer service is really bad! They keep you on hold for a long time and then don't even help you fix the problem. Ridiculous!

Other than the above, the voice recorder works pretty well.

This is my first Digital Voice recorder. It was one of the cheaper ones I have seen but it works great. It is very small, has a USB interface and software for the computer, and has good sound quality. This device has much better sound quality than a lot of the mini cassete recorders people use to dictate into, is easier to use, has a USB interface, and is much smaller and less of a battery hog. This unit also gets high marks from me because it is easy to navigate through the menus. I recommend this unit to anyone.

This little device is an absolute gem. The Voice Studio software works beautifully. There were no problems downloading the recordings to my computer. I have it linked to Dragon Naturally Speaking 7 software for transcribing my voice data into written text and it works well.

The functionality you get for the low price can't be beat.

I bought this recorder for the purpose of recording meetings. The recordings needed to be transfered to my computer. All in all, it's a wonderful product. The reason for the bad review is in the difficulty (nigh unto impossible) of retreiving your recordings if you should happen to lose the CD that comes with the recorder. Panasonic's tech support is horrible at best. There is appearantly no way to replace the needed software or drivers via mail or download. The best solution I was given from Panasonic's technical support was to "buy another one, copy the CD and return it." Aside from the dubious legalities of that suggestion, I recommend not supporting a company that doesn't support their products.

This is a versatile recorder but it is NOT recommended to anyone that wants to send their recordings to other people or even keep their recordings for the future. The recordings can only be read and edited using a Panasonic software (Voice Studio) which is incompatible with anything else. If you want to save your recordings in mp3, first you have to save to .wav using the proprietary software, then transform wav to mp3 using another software. On top of that, if (as it happened to me) you lose or damage the CD with the Voice Studio installer, there is NO way to get a copy from Panasonic or anyone else. It is absolutely mind-boggling why Panasonic would not offer this software for free, as you cannot use it unless one buys the recorder first.
Bottom line: if you want to keep your recordings in a computer, make sure you buy a recorder that records directly in a known format (preferably mp3). Do not buy this product.

I have been using this product for 2 weeks and i haven't had any problem transferring the files from the recorder to my computer at all. i am running on XP and haven't experienced any problem. i just installed the software that came with the package. everything works great. however, i do agree that although it says it records up to 8 hrs you are more likely not going to use the sp mode especially in a medium size lecture hall. i have found that everything works fine with just the FQ mode which means you can record upto 4 hrs. and 40 mins.