Rating: 
Summary: Not good as a primary dictation device.
Review: I got one of these at work to be used primarily as a dictation device. It is almost unusable. There is no cue forward/reverse during record. You can only pause/restart. Can't edit your files. Can't insert in middle of file. Voice quality is great though.
Rating:
Summary: Really didn't meet my needs.
Review: I had to purchase this since I thought that the quality would surpass my expectation. I was to record a conference and translate it to english for a formal presentation to the board. Not only was the quality horrible, but it was un understandable. I find this product to be a big waste of money. I'm sure theirs something out there that can do better. Sorry Olympus, I've had your product in the past and was VERY satisfied, but this one really let me down when I really needed it.I'd give it a no star, but the head set was actually the only good part of the unit.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent to recorder lectures
Review: I have used DM-1 to recorde lectures, and I am truly impressed by the quality of this unit. The microphone can pick up clear audio even when I sit several rows away from the instructor. The 64MB card can hold more than 10 hours of lectures. The unit accepts Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. So I keep two sets handy, and I never run out of batteries. When I come home, I can easily download the lectures to my PC via USB cable, and it sounds excellent on my computer. I love this unit! I think it is specifically designed for students to record lectures.
Rating: 
Summary: So far, so good but --
Review: I just purchased the Olympus MD-1 and like it very much as a voice recorder; definitely superior to the microcassette I used beforehand. However, this is not so much a review as a question. Earlier, George Ridge wrote that despite Olympus' claims to the contrary, the unit could indeed playback MP3's on a Macintosh with a drag-and-drop procedure using iTunes. I've tried this and failed. Can anyone confirm whether it is possible to load MP3's for playback from a Mac? If so, what is the method? Is using Virtual PC the only way? Thanks!
Rating:
Summary: What I wanted
Review: I needed a really small device for taking notes, making recordings of meetings and listening to my spanish course in while biking. This device does that well. It turned out that it is very good for listening to music with too. I have many other USB devices (I recommend the Linksys hub!), and after installation of a CD-RW on my laptop, I had to go to the Device Manager to click on remove and then restore to get the Olympus working again. /JB
Rating: 
Summary: Not for lectures
Review: I received the recorder expecting it to be as good as the mircocassette recorders that Olympus manufactures. This was not the case for a classroom or lecture recording. The hissing sound couched my voice completely even in a very quiet 10 foot room. It may be fine for a scope of 3-6 inches but, other than that, I would not recommend it. I called Olympus directly and found that they made NO digital voice recorders for large (6-10 feet) conference rooms or lecture halls--yet.
I would like to say that they were very honest and tried their best to help me out. I am just going to update the older model of the Pearlcorder S720 to an S725 or S950 microcassette model.
Again, I would not recommend it for voice recording over a 3-6 inch range even with an external mike--too much internal noise from the recorder itself.
Rating:
Summary: Once bitten, twice shy
Review: I recently took my new DM-1 Voice Recorder to a scientific meeting in Hawaii. I recorded several of the talks in the meeting and downloaded the files to the computer. The sound quality of all the files were terrible!! One can hardly hear the speakers. They were recorded at SP setting, perhaps 5 or 6 rows from the speaker podium. I don't know whether the problem is my Dell Workstation's sound card or the recorder. Otherwise, I would have given it a "1". The MP3 player seems to be OK. I enjoyed the songs very well during the 5-hour flights.
Rating: 
Summary: good MP3 player, so so recorder
Review: I recently took my new DM-1 Voice Recorder to a scientific meeting in Hawaii. I recorded several of the talks in the meeting and downloaded the files to the computer. The sound quality of all the files were terrible!! One can hardly hear the speakers. They were recorded at SP setting, perhaps 5 or 6 rows from the speaker podium. I don't know whether the problem is my Dell Workstation's sound card or the recorder. Otherwise, I would have given it a "1". The MP3 player seems to be OK. I enjoyed the songs very well during the 5-hour flights.
Rating:
Summary: MP3 Playback Compatibility For Mac OS Fix
Review: I would have given it five stars but they dissed Apple by not providing MP3 compatibility. There is an MP3 driver that get's installed by the PC only, Music Match. I've done a lot of searching for freeware to come up with a fix for this. You can use Kilometre. I have a packet with directions for download but the review guidelines prevent me from posting a url for downloading. If you know of a really popular posting forum where I could put this, let me know. Thanks
Rating:
Summary: exactly what I expected
Review: I've had this voice recorder for a few days now (I purchased it in order to record lectures) and thusfar I'm duly impressed by the quality of the sound and its overall versatility and ease-of-use. The DM-1 saves & retrieves data from removeable SmartMedia cards, which until now I was unfamiliar with - these cards are incredibly small, yet hold huge amounts of information (I believe the maximum for the DM-1 is 128 meg). This, coupled with the highly compressed .dss format of the voice recorder function (apparently, .dss is of .wav quality, but 1/12th the size), amounts to several hours of quality recording. The DM-1 comes with software and a USB cable so that you can transfer files to and from your computer, and overall I'd say the voice software is quite good. There are functions to speed up and slow down the playback (good for zipping through less important material), as well as to convert the files to .wav format upon transfer (handy if you're thinking of saving things to an audio cdr). For mp3 purposes, the DM-1 is treated as though it were another disk drive (G: on my computer), making the transfer of mp3 files relatively easy, although not extraordinarily fast. The speaker in the unit is nothing to boast about, but I've plugged a good set of Grado headphones into it and gotten really excellent sound. My only gripe on the mp3 end would have to be the equalizer function - you can customize your own settings, but you can't do it while the unit is playing, so adjusting it is sort of hit-or-miss (usually miss). I imagine that extra functions like this were cut out in favor of energy conservation - the DM-1 takes AAA batteries, and they last a good while (the manual says 8 hours for recording, 6 for playback). Unfortunately, no ac adapter is included with this unit, but I can hardly imagine lugging around an adapter to power such a small, portable recorder. Finally, the DM-1 is a very attractive recorder, and it comes with a nice soft black case for carrying. The unit seems relatively sturdy, though I'm not sure if it would survive a drop.. and I hope I don't have to find out!
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