Olympus LS-100 Wins Best Field Recorder at 2013 MIPA Awards

The flagship Olympus LS-100 digital PCM music recorder has just taken out the award for best field recorder at the 2013 Musikmesse International Press Awards in Germany.

Beating out the Zoom H2N and Roland R-26 to take top accolade is a testimony to the efforts made by Olympus in recent years to break into the music industry. Zoom and Roland are familiar names in music, Olympus can now feel right at home in the recording studio too.

MIPA celebrates it's 14th year as the leading accolade giver in the musical instrument, sheet music and music production world. Awards are given based on votes from over 100 of the worlds leading music magazines.

Field recording, or phonography as it is also known, is the term used for recording outside of the recording studio. But this impressive unit is just as comfy in the recording studio too.

New iPhone App - Hugo Dictation - Works With Olympus Transcription Module

You know those times when you say, "Ah yes !! Why didn't I think of that?" well this is one of those times. A new voice recording app is making waves in the dictation world all because of an obvious yet perfect answer to a solution.

Background: For some time now, I and others have tried to find an easy way to get recorded dictation from an Olympus digital voice recorder and send it via a smart phone, ideal for people who dictate away from their office. I have tried WiFi enabled memory cards, cables into iPads but all no use. The easiest way was to take computer with you, USB connect the recorder and using a wifi hotspot email your dictation. Not the perfect solution.

Solution: Obvious, make a voice recording app and apply the specific smarts needed by the Olympus Transcription Module software (both version R5 DSS Player Pro and R6 ODMS) which is essentially creating an XML file to accompany the audio with specific data related to the audio, like Author Id, Work Types and Priority.

Out of the UK comes the Hugo Dictation app for iPhone which is fully compatible with the Olympus transcription module software. Simply record your dictation on the go and email them through to your typist/typing pool. The audio will auto load into the transcription module and will appear like any dictation recorded on an Olympus pro dictaphone, like the DS-7000 or DS-3500.

Within Hugo you can configure your Author Id so that audio can be identified as yours by your typist/typing pool. Work Type can be assigned to indicate any templates to be used and even a High priority marker can be set for those urgent dictations.

Hugo Dictation is available as a free Lite version or a paid version with recording time limits removed.

UK App Store Link
US App Store Link
AU App Store Link

Flying Saucer Spotted In Offices Turns Out To Be New Olympus ME-33 Microphone

Reports are surfacing of a strange, beautiful object appearing in board and meeting rooms world wide. The object is flat, round and shiny and has the inscription Olympus ME-33 Boundary Microphone on it.

This is a first, Olympus have taken inspiration from Philips (usually it is the other way around) with their new boundary mic the ME-33. Looking strikingly similar to the Philips LFH9172, the ME-33 sits unobtrusively on the desk and upto six can be chained together to cover a large area and therefore picking up audio from some very large meetings.

The ME-33 can be plugged into any Olympus digital voice recorder or dictaphone, for best results we recommend use with the DM-3 or the DS-3500. The ME-33 retails in AU for RRP AU$159.

Firmware Update v1.10 For Olympus DS-7000 & DS-3500 Pro Digital Dictaphone Available

Just a short post, Olympus has Internationally released a new firmware update for their top of the line professional digital dictaphone voice recorders (DS-7000 and DS-3500 models), taking the current firmware version to 1.10

Not much included in this firmware update; an extension to the backlit illumination timings adding 2 and 5 minutes and support for Meta Data Import Function a.k.a. MIF.

The firmware update can be downloaded from the various Olympus websites worldwide as a 2.2Mb zip file with a Windows only .exe file to run to flash your DS-7000 or DS-3500 firmware.

Mac users, either find a friendly Windows person who can run the update for you or flash yourself using Parallels 8 or VMWare Fusion, at your own risk of course as these are non supported. I have flashed using Windows 7 on Parallels 8 with no issues. 

New Olympus LS-12 and LS-14 Hit Australia - Musicians Can't Contain Their Excitement

Finally the long awaited replacements for the superb LS-3, which was discontinued down under later last year (2012), have arrived. Well nearly, the Olympus LS-14 is available in Australia now (April 2013), the cheaper LS-12 is expected next month.

Oh yeah and that bit in the title "Musicians Can't Contain Their Excitement", I made that up, I am assuming that they are as excited as I am. Why am I excited? The price, the LS-12 will retail for AU$199 and the LS-14 for AU$249. That is seriously cheap for studio quality digital PCM music recorders.

The LS-3 was good, the LS-12 and LS-14 are a step up again. Their features include:

• Mac & Windows compatible, always a given for Olympus
• Pre-record - it records before you hit the record button so never miss a cue
• Uncompress PCM WAV recording, and of course MP3 recording if you need it
• Digital metroname
• LS-12 has 2Gb built-in, the LS-14 has 4Gb - both expandable via SD card
• Over dubbing (LS-14 only)
• Tresmic Mics (LS-14 only)
• Chromatic Tuner
• Can be attached to a music stand

That is a long list of top quality music recording goodness, belt out your tunes and the LS-12 and LS-14 won't miss a beat, no clipping with these mics.