Easy MP3 Sound Recorder v3.1 serial key or number

For the fall update to this guide, Wirecutter’s Anna Perling spoke with several experts to learn what makes a great recorder. These included Jerad Lewis, a field application engineer working at TDK, which manufactures microphones, including MEMS mics (microelectromechanical microphones for smartphones), and Rob O’Reilly, a senior member technical staff at Analog Devices (which makes a range of audio and video electronic devices). She also consulted with Wirecutter writer Lauren Dragan, who has a degree in audio production and vocal performance, heads our headphone coverage, and has designed audio-quality and appraisal-testing procedures for our site; Lauren helped Anna design a listening panel to assess the audio quality of the recorders we tested. Anna personally uses recorders and apps for her work as a writer, and she polled fellow Wirecutter staff members about their favorite apps and recorders for work.

For people who need to record audio regularly for school or work, a dedicated device will give you better audio quality and more features than an app. Recorders have built-in storage space, more file-management options, and longer-lasting batteries that are dedicated to recording and playback—you won’t need to worry about saving battery power for sending and receiving texts, emails, or phone calls. The best recorders will have the ability to record in multiple file formats; offer settings that automatically adjust their microphones’ sensitivity for best results in common scenarios like lectures, meetings, and interviews; and have filters (EQ, akin to the bass and treble controls on a stereo system) to reduce excess low and high frequency background noise while you’re recording. Some even use software-based noise cancellation to digitally reduce noise in your recorded files.

If you need to record only occasionally, it may be more convenient to record with a smartphone that you already have (and usually have with you) rather than spending money on a device you’ll infrequently use. Good voice-recording apps have easy-to-use interfaces that let you quickly navigate files and folders, as opposed to the more complicated file storage systems of most hardware voice recorders. Many apps can sync automatically to Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud so you can share or store your files without having to transfer them to a computer via USB.

Smartphone apps can record understandable audio, which may be all you want in a recorder or app. Jerad Lewis, an engineer at TDK, said, “In terms of the noise performance, the MEMS mics that are in phones are getting to the level where they’re probably on par with what’s used in these voice recorders.” But our testing and audio listening panel found that apps still aren’t quite there yet. The comparatively poor sound quality of their recordings may grate on you if you need to listen for extended periods of time—say, for transcribing. Smartphone microphones and noise-cancellation systems are optimized for close-up voice capture as well, and while some apps will let you tweak settings for better recording quality, you can generally get better results from a dedicated recorder. Your choice will come down to features versus convenience, and your particular needs.

If you’re a musician, a professional podcaster, or a radio journalist who needs to publish audio, or if you belong to some other profession that requires the use of a high-quality audio recorder on a regular basis, this guide isn’t for you. Although our picks can record high-quality audio, spending more than about $ will get you larger, higher-quality microphones, and settings you can further finesse. (If true-to-life sound is your primary goal but you don’t know what hardware to get, the podcasting site manicapital.com is a great place to start.)

Wirecutter colleagues agreed that $ is the maximum amount that most people should spend on an audio recorder.

We looked at the latest offerings from reputable manufacturers of recorders like Olympus, Sony, and Philips, and we browsed Amazon’s 40 best-selling digital voice recorders. To find out what makes a good recorder, we spoke to two experts: Jerad Lewis from TDK, and Rob O’Reilly at Analog Devices.

To narrow down the contenders, the first thing we looked at was price. Wirecutter colleagues agreed that $ was the maximum amount that most people should spend on a voice recorder. These days, the audio quality and functionality that you can get from a recorder costing $ or less is more than good enough to earn it a place in your kit if you record vocal audio fairly frequently and care even a little about sound quality. The only people who should consider spending more are professionals who need to publish the audio they record, and they likely already know which recorder is best for their specific needs.

We also decided that, at this price level, any recorder should include these key features:

• Good recording quality: While audio doesn’t need to be podcast quality, recordings should be intelligible and free from hiss, rumbles, echoes, or the excessive background noise that plagues poorer-quality recordings.
• An easy-to-read display: We preferred larger, uncluttered screens, and if possible, a backlight to make the screen readable in low-light or dark settings.
• A simple-to-navigate file system: This should include self-explanatory buttons, shortcut buttons, and a convenient back button.
• At least 4 GB of internal memory: This amount allows for about 40 hours of recording time, depending on the chosen audio format.
• At least 10 hours of battery life.
• A microSD card slot: This allows for memory expansion beyond the 4 GB minimum.
• Easy file transfer: For moving files between the recorder and either a Mac or Windows computer via USB.
• Format flexibility: We preferred the capability to record audio in a number of file formats and at various bit rates or sample rates to optimize for storage space or sound quality.
• Extra features: We looked for recorders with presets that adjust mic sensitivity and equalization to optimize for specific recording situations (these are sometimes called “scene select”) and background noise cancellation.

Even with these restrictions in place, we ended up with dozens of recorders to choose from. To thin the herd even further, we nixed any models with an Amazon rating of less than four stars. We also paid close attention to the availability of each model we were considering, and we excluded any recorders that companies couldn’t confirm were still being made.

In , we looked at eight models, and for this update we looked at four more. Using the above criteria, we whittled down the size of our test pool to these models:

For voice recording apps, we consulted 10 editorial roundups covering both iOS and Android apps, noting the apps with the highest review ratings, best-reviewed interfaces, and most-useful features. We also polled Wirecutter reporters and editors about the apps they use for work. We dismissed transcription and call recorder apps, since this guide is geared toward in-person recording of meetings, lectures, and interviews. We then used the following criteria to choose our finalists:

• Easy-to-navigate, uncluttered interface
• Option to sync to popular cloud platforms like iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox
• Multiple storage and recording formats (MP3, MP4, WAV, as well as bitrate and sample rate options) to control for file size and audio quality
• $5 or less, since we focused on apps for people who don’t need the features and audio quality of a hardware recorder

Based on recommendations and this criteria, our final app list consisted of:

iOS:

Android:

For our update, we tested the voice recorders and apps in three settings: sitting at the back of a college lecture hall during class, in a loud coffee shop to simulate an interview, and in a quiet room to mimic dictation. We hit record on all the hardware recorders at the same time in order to directly compare how each captured the same audio; for the apps, we took turns recording with an iPhone 6 and a Samsung HTC (Newer phones may have better microphones, but our experts said that on most smartphones, the app will have more of an effect on recording quality than the microphone.)

We recorded with noise cut (high- and low-pass filters) enabled on the recorders that had it (all of our test models except for the Philips) and scene-setting features appropriate for a given test situation turned on, based on the recommendations of our experts. “There are a lot of recorders out there today that will do a good job recording conversations in the presence of lots of other background noise,” said O’Reilly of Analog Devices. “There are others out there that are horrible because they record everything.”

Most of the recorders have options to select recording modes for scenes like lectures, meetings, interviews, or dictations. Recording modes do the work for you: Selecting a scene automatically changes the recorder’s settings for that situation.

Wirecutter writer Anna Perling recorded MP3 audio at the highest bit rates available on each device in order to get the best possible audio quality—this showed what each recorder was capable of. That meant Kbps for all recorders except for the Olympus, which maxes out at Kbps (though even this should be good enough for voice recordings). For the lecture scene, Anna sat in the back of Sahithya Reddivari’s engineering class at Georgia State University in Clarkston, Georgia, and lined recorders up next to each other, with the mics facing toward the lecturer. For the coffee shop scene, she headed to a crowded Starbucks and sat near the bar with her mom. The two read a Seinfeld dialogue, with the mics facing toward the “interviewee,” or main speaker, to mimic an interview. For the office scene, Anna read a different Seinfeld monologue in a quiet room in her house to mimic dictation, placing recorders on a table 2 feet away from her mouth. Once she had the recordings, she noted how each recorder and app let her store the files, and how easy or difficult it was to transfer those files to her computer, label and organize them, and then upload them to Dropbox.

Anna then conducted a blind listening panel: Four Wirecutter staffers listened to second samples of each unlabeled recording and rated the overall audio quality and intelligibility of words for each.

The Sony UX received the highest overall scores from our listening panel, and it has the best combination of features of any recorder we tested. The UX’s bright, backlit screen makes the display easier to read than the other recorders we tested except the Philips DVT, which has a color display. The recorder is also the easiest to navigate, with an intuitive toggle menu to access settings and recordings. Plus, the UX conveniently comes with a built-in rechargeable battery, so you won’t need to keep spare batteries on hand (though you will need to bring a charger or wall adapter if you need to charge on the go).

The Sony UX ranked roughly the same as two other models in two of the three recording settings. The UX did the best in the coffee shop scene: One listener said, “You could hear some background noise, but it never drowned out the speaker.” Of the office test, a listener observed that “this was a calming recording to listen to. You can kind of hear some room interference, but that's such a minor problem for a voice recorder that it's barely worth mentioning. Otherwise this was a pleasant if somewhat filtered recording.” The panel picked the Philips DVT in the lecture recordings, but just by half a point (on a scale of one to three, with three being the highest score), and listeners said that the lecturer still sounded clear on the UX’s recording. The Sony PX, the budget pick, barely edged out the UX in a quiet office.

The UX was the easiest recorder to navigate and use among those tested. It’s intuitive to use out of the box: Pressing the home button leads you to a simple toggle menu where you can record, fine-tune settings, and listen to music (that can be uploaded to the device from a computer) or recordings. Buttons are clearly labeled, unlike on the Philips DVT, and a back button makes menu navigation much simpler than on the Olympus WS The UX has a built-in USB plug, which can be extended or retracted by sliding a button on the side of the recorder that lets you connect the recorder to your computer to download your recordings. Once the connection has been made, you can also name files and folders on the device from your desktop—those changes are clearly reflected on the device, something that couldn’t be done with the other picks and might come in handy for long-term organization. The Philips recorder lacks this function altogether; on the Olympus, Anna was able to rename files and folders from her Mac, but the device no longer saw them (the Olympus manual does warn against this possibility).

The Sony UX’s extra features make an already-great recorder stand out from the rest.

The recorder comes with 4 GB of storage, which allows for roughly 39 hours of recording time using MP3 format at Kbps; that’s comparable to what you get with most of the recorders we tested. A covered but easily accessible microSD slot allows for 32 GB more of storage space if you need more recording hours. The UX offers a range of file and recording formats so you can opt for better audio quality or smaller file sizes.

The UX’s extra features make an already-great recorder stand out from the rest. Choose from a “noise cut” filter (which rolls off both low and high frequency sounds) or a low-cut filter to reduce boomy lower frequencies and rumbly sounds alone. Scene selection presets let you optimize EQ and microphone sensitivity settings for lectures, meetings, interviews, voice notes, and loud and soft music scenarios. You can mark locations in your recording on the fly, so you can return to them later as you listen, and voice-activated recording can automatically stop you during pauses in conversation. (This feature was on all of the recorders tested, though you’ll probably prefer to manually pause and restart recordings to make sure you’re getting the audio you want.)

Selecting the Clear Voice function during playback helped reduce background noise in our coffee shop and lecture recordings but didn’t make as big of a difference as the noise-cancel feature on the Olympus. The UX’s other playback options, however, made it overall a better choice than the Olympus for people looking to transcribe interviews or lectures: an A-B Repeat function lets you go back and replay the same section repeatedly, and digital pitch control lets you adjust the playback speed if you need to listen more closely to difficult-to-decipher passages. The UX has a transcription mode that will give you a cleaner interface with fewer distractions while transcribing if that’s something you prefer, but you can still fast-forward, rewind, and adjust the digital pitch control in regular playback mode. Oddly, you won’t be able to use the A-B Repeat to replay the same section repeatedly in transcription mode.

For better audio quality, you can plug in an external mic, though we think that would be unnecessary for most people given the good results we were able to get with the onboard mics in our varied test situations. The UX also has a headphone jack for monitoring recordings and listening to playback.

The UX is a small, compact recorder that feels nice in the hand, and its matte plastic and sleek design make it look a little less cheap than others that were tested. At just 4 inches tall, inches wide, and inch thick, the UX is the slimmest recorder we tested. It can easily fit into a shirt pocket or in the pocket of skinny jeans, while the other recorders are almost twice as thick and fit better in a purse or bag.

Like all of the recorders we tested, the UX also comes with a strap loop if you want to add a wrist strap or lanyard; you’ll need to provide your own, though it’s easy enough to find an inexpensive option.

The screen on the UX’s fades and eventually shuts off during recording, which is a little disconcerting, but an LED indicates that you’re still recording. This recorder also lacks a convenient erase button, so you’ll need to navigate through its menu to delete recordings.

Wirecutter staff writer Anna Perling has been using our top pick, the Sony UX, to record interviews over the past year. The audio files from the voice recorder have been notably better than the ones her smartphone has captured, and she hasn’t had any problems or durability issues. She reported, “The sound quality on our pick is infinitely better than when I use my phone—there's less background fuzz, voices are louder and clearer, and everything sounds a lot closer (vs. tinny and distant). I used the recorder [with] my phone as a backup when recording an interview in a retail store, and I was surprised at how much better the recorder did. While I like the look and feel of the matte black finish, it can pick up fingerprints. But no problems with durability—it has held up fine thrown in a backpack.”

If you can’t find the Sony UX, or its price increases dramatically, we also like the Olympus WS for its superior combination of storage space and battery life, each of which was better than with everything else we tested. The Olympus didn’t do as well as the UX in our listening tests, ranking lowest overall for audio quality by our panel, though its recordings are still understandable and it scored well on the lecture test, tying with the UX The main complaint from listeners was that the lecture and coffee shop audio samples sounded “tinny.” We also found that the Olympus’s menu system is less intuitive than that of the UX

The Olympus’s 8 GB of storage is double that of most of the models we considered, including the UX, and you can expand it even further with a microSD card. The Olympus boasts hours of battery life when recording in MP3 at Kbps, or about four times as long as our main pick.

The Olympus has one of the largest screens of the models tested, larger than that of our main pick. The larger screen makes the menus slightly easier to see in daylight, but the Olympus’s screen isn’t backlit, making it harder to use in low-light settings. Navigating the menus is also more difficult than on our top pick. It seemed counterintuitive to navigate using the up and down buttons to access different folders, and to have to press the side buttons twice to select items; it’s also missing a back button. On the other hand, it does have a convenient erase button for one-step file deletion.

As with the Sony UX, a pop-out USB plug lets you easily upload files to a computer and recharge the two replaceable AAA batteries, which takes about 3 hours. The Olympus doesn’t have quite as many high-quality recording options as the UX, but it still has a range of formats that let you optimize quality or maximize storage space. It also has a low-cut filter to reduce excess low-end rumble. Although the Olympus doesn’t have a scene setting aimed at recording music like our main pick, it has presets that tailor recording settings for dictation, meetings, conferences, and telephone recordings. Like the UX, the Olympus has a voice-activated recording setting to automatically stop and start recordings based on volume levels so you don’t have to manually pause if you’re recording a lecture or conversation with lots of breaks.

While playing back audio, the WS can compensate somewhat for problems you might have run into while recording: a noise-cancellation setting can reduce overall background hiss (though this comes at the expense of battery life), while a voice balancer setting can even out recordings that were made with the mic sensitivity set too low or high by compressing the overall level for a more even sound (though you might run into increased noise).

During our testing, noise cancellation was effective at reducing background hiss, clangs, and the noise from the coffee grinder, while the voice balancer did even out recorded levels though it made voices sound flat. The effects of both features were more obvious than Sony’s Clear Voice mode and did help make recorded voices clearer, but the Olympus lacks Sony’s handy track mark list, dedicated transcription mode to let you fast-forward and rewind, and digital pitch control to slow or speed recordings, making it overall less useful for transcribing than the UX

The Olympus is made of shiny plastic and has raised buttons that some people will find easier to use. It’s the only recorder we tested to come with a case—a neoprene sleeve—which is useful for protecting the recorder during storage.

Budget pick

Three high-fidelity microphones for best-in-class audio recording

Three high-fidelity microphones for best-in-class audio recording

Several key components are needed to record sound as naturally as possible in studio-like audio quality: high signal-to-noise ratio, highly dynamic microphones to capture soft tones as well as loud drums, a high-quality microphone suspension to avoid pickup of grip noise, a strong left and right channel separation for human ear live-like effect.

Stereo MP3 and PCM recording for clear playback and easy file sharing

Stereo MP3 and PCM recording for clear playback and easy file sharing

Capture your recordings in stereo MP3 or PCM format. The popular MP3 file format allows you to play back your files virtually anywhere and simply share them with others. The PCM (WAV) format allows stereo recording of lossless, uncompressed sound in CD-like audio quality.

8 GB internal memory for up to 88 days of recording

8 GB internal memory for up to 88 days of recording

Capture and store up to 88 days of continuous recording thanks to the 8 GB of internal memory. A microSD memory card slot for up to 32 GB of additional memory guarantees virtually unlimited recording capacity.

Rechargeable Li-ion polymer battery for extra-long recording

Rechargeable Li-ion polymer battery for extra-long recording

The high-capacity Li-ion polymer battery can be easily charged through a standard USB C jack. This guarantees extended battery life for extra-long recording up to 36 hours, ensuring that your recorder will always be ready to work when you are.

Free smartphone app for remote audio control

Free smartphone app for remote audio control

Control your audio recorder using your smartphone, even from a distance. The Philips VoiceTracer app makes recording events such as lectures much easier and more convenient. You can place your recorder in the front of the room near the speaker, take a seat at the back, and still control recording comfortably and without interrupting the lecture. The Philips VoiceTracer app can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

Smartphone app for easy sharing of recordings

Smartphone app for easy sharing of recordings

Transfer your recordings straight from your Philips VoiceTracer to your smartphone via Wi-Fi and instantly share them with friends and family using the convenient Philips VoiceTracer app. No need to attach the recorder to your PC using a cable anymore to transfer and share files.

Large color display for clear recording status information

Large color display for clear recording status information

The large color display offers sharp images, making it easier to see and read everything at first glance. The clear user interface supports seven languages and is optimized for easy, intuitive operation.

Audio scences for automatic perfect audio settings in any situation

Audio scences for automatic perfect audio settings in any situation

The Philips VoiceTracer comes with preset scenes which automatically adjust the recorder’s audio settings depending on what you want to record, whether it is notes, audio for speech recognition, interviews, lectures, music or meetings.

Plug and play in Windows, macOS and Linux

Plug and play in Windows, macOS and Linux

The recorder requires no special installation Simply plug your recorder into your PC or Mac and play back your files or transfer them to your computer right away.

Tripod mount for optimal stable positioning

Tripod mount for optimal stable positioning

The integrated tripod thread allows mounting the recorder onto a tripod or camera to capture even clearer sound in an optimal and stable position.

Smart recording and playback functions for best recording results

Smart recording and playback functions for best recording results

Smart recording functions make it even easier to achieve stunning audio results. The pre-recording and timer functions make sure you don’t miss a single bit. Voice-activated recording is a convenient feature for hands-free recording which pauses recording when you stop speaking and resumes automatically when you begin speaking again. Recordings can be edited by overwriting a part or adding a new recording at the end. Long recordings can be split automatically or manually into separate files for easier editing or sharing. Smart playback functions, such as bookmarks and filters, also make it easier and quicker to find the recording you are looking for.

Control your Philips VoiceTracer audio recorder using your smartphone, and share your audio files easily and quickly with your colleagues, friends and family.

Please note: The app only supports Philips VoiceTracer models DVT, DVT, DVT or DVT

Download the app for your phone

Control your Philips VoiceTracer audio recorder using your smartphone, and share your audio files easily and quickly with your colleagues, friends and family.

Please note: The app only supports Philips VoiceTracer models DVT, DVT, DVT or DVT

Download the app for your phone