Voice Detect Feature In The Olympus WS-812 / WS-813

When Olympus released their new range of WS series digital voice recorders early in 2012, perfect for interviews and meetings, they added three new features to the WS-812 and WS-813 digital voice/meeting/interview recorders (not on the WS-811). Those three new features are:

• Voice Detect
• Voice Balancer
• Voice Changer

In our latest post on our main blog we have a closer look at the Voice Detect feature. A feature with alot of promise although in its current evolution may not be as useful as it potentially could be.

Voice Detect when applied to a recorded audio file, like and interview, will remove white space or areas of recorded audio with no voice, thus condensing the audio so that on playback the spoken word will flow. This is a handy feature if you listen back to your audio on the recorder and take notes from your interview or meeting.

Why I say not as potentially useful as it could be is that audio processed with Voice Detect can not be exported in that state from the recorder. When you pull a voice detected audio file from the Olympus WS-812 or WS-813 across to your Mac or PC the audio reverts back to its original state - white space remains. If Olympus can find a way in future releases or in future firmware to allow export of Voice Detected audio we would see alot of very happy audio transcription  typists.

For now though, this feature will still be handy for some. To listen to a sample of audio with and without voice detect recorded on an Olympus WS-812 head over to our main blog - click here.