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.

New WS Series Digital Voice Recorders From Olympus

Announced in early January 2012 by Olympus Voice we will this year see a new range of WS series digital voice recorders around the globe. Australia can expect them early Q2, Europe already has them and also the US I believe.

The new range consists of the WS-811, WS-812 and the WS-813 and in Australia will replace the current range - WS-650S, WS-750M and WS-706M. Note the trailing letter off the model number has finally been dropped - S was for stereo and M was for music, no longer really relevant as these and so many other features are consistent in the Olympus digital voice recorder range.

What was a surprise to me was no huge increase in memory with the recorders keeping 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb of internal memory - all however have a microSD slot if you you need more memory it is easily added.

Of the three, the WS-812 and WS-813 are fully featured with the new voice functions included (balancer, playback and changer), PCM recording and on the WS-813 there is also an FM radio.

New Innovative Features In WS Series Olympus Recorders In 2012

Olympus were on hand at CES 2012 this year, in force with their cameras and also this year with some new digital voice recorders set to join the line up this year. What caught our attention was not so much the usual changes to the ranges (better mics, more modern design etc) but some innovative functions being built into the recorders themselves.

Its all about the voice in 2012 and Olympus have picked up on a couple of pain points from digital recordings and improved them. Built into the new WS-812 and WS-813 digital voice recorders are three new features:

• Voice Balancer
• Voice Changer 
• Voice Playback

To learn a little more about these features and what they do click on the heading of this post to head to our main blog site.