Customer Reviews

Panasonic RR-US380 Compact IC Digital Voice Recorder

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you're just looking for a device to replace a tape recorder so's you can record lectures or yourself, DON'T BUY THIS. It's way more than what you need.

You see, it's actually a VOICE EDITOR. So the instructions are quite complicated (the PDF file, for example, is 81 pages).

It comes with a software program that you set up on your computer, but which, in my estimation, is not user-friendly. I've had it for like a week and I'm still trying to figure it out.

Not that the product is a piece of junk or anything. It's a quite solidly-made little machine.

But if you're looking to simply record voices, this is WAY more complicated than you need, and you're gonna spend hours figuring out how to get it to do simple tasks.

Another complaint: the audio files you create can be played via the "in-house" software system or transformed into WAV files, after which they are portable. But you must have other software if you'd like to further convert the WAV files into Mp3's or WMA's.

UPDATE: After having used this thing all summer for a college course, I would like to add additional insights gleaned after having used the thing long after figuring it out.

First of all, the mike seems to be of really poor quality. I know this doesn't make a lot of sense, since presumably Panasonic is including the same mike as in the cassette-tape recorders. But no. The quality you'll get is markedly below what you can get with a cassette-tape recorder. And there's no "adjustment" level for the quality of the audio file you're making.

As a result of this, the thing will maybe go for 5 hours before it's "full." Since this is non-adjustable, this is a useful piece of information.

I used it, as I said, for recording a professor: though he moved around a bit, for the most part I was sitting under his nose for most of the lectures. For this situation, set the thing on "dictation," rather than "meeting." Counterintuitive, but you'll get better results.

I bought this to replace my micro-cassette recorder for a series of 1 on 1 interviews not knowing the great software that comes with it. While on the road I loaded the software and as a previous reviewer states it is alot to get through. However, if you want to dictate your own papers this is a great system. The speech recognition software did not help much for the interviews, but my own work afterwards writing up the results was "greatly" reduced.

The intial setup of voice recognition is long, cumbersome and sometimes frustrating as the software tries to learn your speech patterns (and using the learning/training software multiple times helps accuracy ALOT), but it was no different with ViaVoice and MS voice recognition software. Once the software knows your voice prepare to type very little. I was writing a paper and decided to see what would happen. I talked (rambled) for about 65 minutes total. The system recognized about 97% of my speech. I transferred the translated speech file to my word processor and let it find the grammatical/structural errors and then I went through the paper while listening to the speech on my computer. I stopped and made corrections as needed. The freedom to just talk rather than stop to type up my thoughts as I went along was incredible.

If you are in a place where transcribing your own words takes up much of your time (graduate student, small business owner) this recorder and the included software is terrific. For the classroom, I use it as a backup to my notes. The microphone picks up everything so sometimes it can be frustrating. One interview picked up a wall clock ticking about 10 feet away.

Plan on spending a few minutes getting used to the buttons, menus and functions of the recorder itself, but most of it is reasonably intuitive. The multiple subdirectories makes working on different projects a real joy. You can be dictating/working on one topic, get a brainstorm, change to another directory say what you want and get back to your original work with almost no effort. Then when you hook up to your computer to transfer the files all your wit and wisdom is saved separately. It does take some mental gymnastics to work your way around the computer file transfer portion (just read the PDF file a couple times and pay attention to the direction arrows on the screen) but that gets eaiser with repetition.

I have used my Panasonic RR-US380 for about 2 years and have been happy with the performance of this product. The quality of the audio is above average ( I tried about 8 different models) and compression of the sound file is very efficient. If you plan on using it for personal use it would be a good choice.

If you want to use it in a business setting I would not recommend it. The problem is the proprietary file types that Panasonic uses cannot be played with anything other then their software. You can convert to .wav but it's an extra step that shouldn't be needed. They do offer a player you can give to someone with the files but I've never been able to get it to work.

The other big problem is the access rights the software requires. It can not be used by multiple users on a single PC running Windows XP. It must be run by someone with administrator rights who installed it. If I install it and run it, and you have administrator rights, it still will not run correctly for you. If you don't have admin rights forget about it. So essentially only one person can use the software (and thus the Panasonic RR-US380) on each computer which causes a problem if you have shared computers. The software is powerful and easy to use but my business had to get rid of the Panasonic recorders for theses 2 reasons.

This recorder is the perfect, light weight recorder with plenty of space to store hours of material. I have used it for both inividual interviews and focus group meetings and in each instance the recording was tremendous. The functionality of the device is simple and even without reading the instruction book I was able to figure out how to use it. Downloading to your computer is simple and takes very little time. I would encourage anyone looking for a quality digital device to consider this one as it is lightweight and durable. Batteries seem to go somewhat quickly so I might encouage people to consider rechargable batteries as an option to save some money long term. Ideal for people doing interviews for their dissertation or other research studies.

The recorder is easy to use and the microphone is very sensitive -- at a recent interview I was conducting, it picked up the voices of people talking in the hallway outside the closed door of the interview room. Trouble is, I cannot figure out the software, and I am not a techno-idiot. I don't care about using the software for voice recognition (since I interview many people, that wouldn't be practical), but I can't even figure out how to get the files off the device and onto my hard drive. There are five files on the recorder and they don't even show up in the voice editing software window. I'd assumed when I got the recorder that it would be drag and drop, but it isn't.

I have just ordered a Sony recorder that IS drag and drop and that needs no proprietary software. I'm going to leave the Panasonic in my car to use for voice memos that I don't need to save to my computer.

My experience exactly mirrors that of one of the other reviewers of this product. I lost the software for this recorder in a move, and cannot find any information on how to obtain new software on the Panasonic Web site. It is bad enough that I would have to buy it (On HPs site, for example, you can conveniently download the software for their electronic products for free), but I can't even find any information on how to buy it. The recorder I bought for $100 is now virtually useless to me. Never again.

It is a nice recorder. the software is a nightmare. it makes a very simple thing easy. I bought it to record a lecture and burn to cd which is apparently an impossible task. Software is terrible. do not buy!

I've had my rr-us380 for almost a year and recently needed to reinstall the voice editing software. When I couldnt find the installer cd I assumed I'd be able to download from the panasonic site, after all the software would only really be useful to someone who had bought their hardware. After a frustrating amount of time looking for that I finally landed on an email form for support and sent an email asking how I could obtain the software. Actually, the form didn't give any feedback after hitting submit so I kind of assumed I had sent...

Two days later I called their toll free number at 1-800-211-pana and spent a good half hour wending from parts to support to other departments through their jeckyl and jeeves like voice menu system (which doesnt "understand" operator or other or...). Support sent me to sales, sales disconnected me, then sales sent me to support. Finally Katy in sales broke the news to me: the part (for the software I can only use on the device I bought from them) is $25 plus shipping of $6... for something I had hoped I'd quickly download off their site. (Note that the "manual" is a single 11x16 page you -can- download free as a pdf. All I need here is the software installer.)

That is really horrible service. They could have gotten me for the $25 particularly if I hadn't had to have -worked- so hard to find out it would cost me (and especially if it was a key for immediate download...) but having to work to find that I would have to pay for software media (the software I already own...) was really bad. Then there's the $6 "handling" fee that tells me I'll have to wait on some delivery service rather then downloading... grrrr....

That said I'll confess: this is great hardware. It's extremely convenient and the software (despite a -horrible- glitzy and unintuitive interface) it extremely usefull. I'm going to go now, and talk myself into buying an Olympus. But I'm not sure I'll succeed (they might still get their $31 filthy lucre from me).