Rating: 
Summary: Good, improved computer flexibility
Review: 11/21/02
Just to update this review...I have visited the olympus website and they do now offer the software for Mac OS, making me a very happy camper and able to raise my rating from 3 to 4 stars. With this improved software, downloading directly from the unit is very simple and I can now translate the Olympus file to Quicktime. The unit is still working very well a year later and has given me no problem at all.
One final note...ALWAYS keep an extra set of batteries handy. I use it pretty much every weekday for about 2 hours or so and by the end of the month the batteries need to be replaced. One minute it could show that the battery life is fine and the next time you turn it on it may tell you that the batteries are running low & there is no "grace period" here. If it tells you the batteries are low it will not work at all.October, 2001
Olympus makes some very good products but this, while good for the cutting edge technology that it is, really needs to have some improvments made - particularly to the download software that is included. I have used it for class recordings in lecture halls and the pick-up on the built-in mic is very good. I have tried to listen to the recordings directly from the recording unit itself and it is difficult to listen to. I would not recommend getting this recorder if your intention is to listen mostly from the unit. Opt to download and listen from your computer if you really want to hear what you have recorded.Downloading the files to the computer isn't terribly difficult if you own a PC, but if you own a Mac there are some extra steps involved. I own a Mac and I had to install the software on my Virtual PC software and drag and drop the files into the Windows environment for them to play. It doesn't sound like much of a problem, but the files can get large and it does get annoying after awhile to drop the files from the recorder to the Mac then to Windows. This is my biggest criticism for the product - that it does not support Mac OS - and that it does not record in a popular format that can be played with RealPlayer or Quicktime player software. It rather uses Olympus' own version of a complicated and seriously lacking player. The recordings seem to not work on any other player software. I own other Olympus products - a digital camera - and Olympus seems to do the same thing with all its software. All in all, I do recommend this product if you are a PC user but I think that for the price you would be better off waiting for a few more generations of the product to pass.
Rating:
Summary: Great product with a few weaknesses
Review: As a voice recorder:
The DM-1 and the Olympus software provide very basic functions. Get a more serious dictation machine if you need a lot of functionality. You can add index marks while recording or playing back, which is pretty handy for longer recordings. The voice activation mode with variable sensitivity works very well. You can set one alarm to play back a recording, but you can only set a time, not a date (like an alarm clock). The DM-1 would be a lot more useful to me if I could set multiple alarms and set both a time and a date. That way it could replace my Palm for creating reminders (the DM-1 is a lot easier to carry around). In high sensitivity mode, the mic picks up distant voices very well and playback quality is good with headphones. The sound quality is very acceptable, but I recently tried out a $100 Sony ICD-B10 recorder and the Sony had signficantly better recorded playback; very smooth sound without the slight roughness of the DM-1. The Sony also had (and the DM-1 lacks) a timer so you can set a date and time to start recording. When I plugged stereo headphones into the Sony I only heard sound out of one speaker. I find it easier to listen when I can hear the playback in both ears, so I like the DM-1 better in that respect. As an MP3 player:
The included ear buds had mediocre sound (weak bass) so I got some lightweight $5 Maxell headphones and now the sound is excellent. The WOW system gives you wider stereo separation. Just choose the low 3D setting, the higher settings sound too shrill. There is also a variable bass boost setting. The Rock equalizer preset works fine for me, the user preset is difficult to set because you can't adjust it during playback. The USB connection is slow. I got a 128 MB Smartmedia card ($40) so I can load more music. With 128 MB I can load 2 hours of music and still have 1.5 hours of voice recording space left. Other:
There are four tiny switches that may be hard to use if you have large fingers, and they seem fragile. The volume wheel is tiny but works OK for me. There is a plastic cover for the USB port but it is too easy to lose. A sliding door or attached cover would have worked better. If you listen to MP3 music a lot, you need rechargeable batteries. The two-tone blue case with orange backlight is very cool.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes the whole is NOT greater than its parts.
Review: Based on the marketing, the Olympus DM-1 Digital voice recorder should be a nearly perfect tool. Combining as much as 44 hours of recording capacity (if you expand the memory to 128M) with quality MP3 playback is an attractive combination. Especially for someone like me who has a borderline need for a DVR, but who is attracted by having music playback capability. The price is high, but I thought there was every reason to expect the synthesis of two quality machines would be worth the cost. Alas, this was not to be. On the good side, the voice recorder is simple to use with easy to deal with buttons and functions. MP3 playback is good as well. The display on the machine is legible and quite straightforward. And the DVR software, 'DSS Player', installs easily and works with no problems. Unfortunately, from this point on, the news is bad. For an expensive digital recorder, is surprising that it only provides for three folders with 200 untitled recordings in each. It is also surprising that there are no features for inserting and appending to a recording. This makes the DM-1 a useful only for unsophisticated recording. Sound quality, never great in DVR's has a lot of noise, even in standard recording mode. For music, the supplied earphones are unacceptable. They are extremely position dependent, and refused to stay in my ears if I moved my head at all. But the real issue on the MP3 side is the supplied software - 'MusicMatch Jukebox,' not the player itself. I have a perfectly ordinary Win98SE machine. The software installed easily enough, and it created some MP3 files from a CD, but could not see the DM-1's disk space. I tried this with SmartMedia cards from several different suppliers, and they all failed. However, I could move the files to the cards directly, as they appear as a disk drive to the system so I could have managed. Playback, by the way is quite acceptable. What cinched my full negative was, 'MusicMatch,' in the end. This destabilized the USB lines, resulting in repeated system hangs, and finally compromised the registry. When I checked their e-mail site, I found that I would have to but the 'real' version of the software if I were to get any help. When I did e-mail them anyway, I got a very unhelpful response, and then nothing. You may draw your own conclusions, but I think Olympus should really look elsewhere for a provider. As I see it, I paid a premium price for technology available for a fourth the cost. Buying two decent machines and gluing them together would have been more satisfactory. I am not prone to giving poor ratings, but I feel I have no choice. People who really need this functionality should look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes the whole is NOT greater than its parts.
Review: Based on the marketing, the Olympus DM-1 Digital voice recorder should be a nearly perfect tool. Combining as much as 44 hours of recording capacity (if you expand the memory to 128M) with quality MP3 playback is an attractive combination. Especially for someone like me who has a borderline need for a DVR, but who is attracted by having music playback capability. The price is high, but I thought there was every reason to expect the synthesis of two quality machines would be worth the cost. Alas, this was not to be. On the good side, the voice recorder is simple to use with easy to deal with buttons and functions. MP3 playback is good as well. The display on the machine is legible and quite straightforward. And the DVR software, 'DSS Player', installs easily and works with no problems. Unfortunately, from this point on, the news is bad. For an expensive digital recorder, is surprising that it only provides for three folders with 200 untitled recordings in each. It is also surprising that there are no features for inserting and appending to a recording. This makes the DM-1 a useful only for unsophisticated recording. Sound quality, never great in DVR's has a lot of noise, even in standard recording mode. For music, the supplied earphones are unacceptable. They are extremely position dependent, and refused to stay in my ears if I moved my head at all. But the real issue on the MP3 side is the supplied software - 'MusicMatch Jukebox,' not the player itself. I have a perfectly ordinary Win98SE machine. The software installed easily enough, and it created some MP3 files from a CD, but could not see the DM-1's disk space. I tried this with SmartMedia cards from several different suppliers, and they all failed. However, I could move the files to the cards directly, as they appear as a disk drive to the system so I could have managed. Playback, by the way is quite acceptable. What cinched my full negative was, 'MusicMatch,' in the end. This destabilized the USB lines, resulting in repeated system hangs, and finally compromised the registry. When I checked their e-mail site, I found that I would have to but the 'real' version of the software if I were to get any help. When I did e-mail them anyway, I got a very unhelpful response, and then nothing. You may draw your own conclusions, but I think Olympus should really look elsewhere for a provider. As I see it, I paid a premium price for technology available for a fourth the cost. Buying two decent machines and gluing them together would have been more satisfactory. I am not prone to giving poor ratings, but I feel I have no choice. People who really need this functionality should look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Travel, lectures or notes -- It's the best.
Review: For all around business to pleasure, the DM-1 is the best. With 12Khz sampling, the Olympus DM-1 is great for recording meetings, lectures, or just taking notes. And the DSS compressed audio files are easy to manage once downloaded onto your computer. Your computer sees the DM-1 as a USB device drive. It appears as D: drive on my XP system at home and at work. The DM-1 also plays MP3 or WMA music files in the music mode. Too cool. Pop in a 128Mb SmartMedia card with a couple of recorded CDs on it, and you've got a lot of music to listen to while traveling or during those quiet lunch breaks. I matched mine up with a set of Bose Quite-Comfort headphones to relax in those all-to-commom noisy office/travel environments. The Bose headphones don't mash your earrings into your head either like some of the other headphones do. They're the best. The DM-1, however, IS NOT a dictation/transcription device. If that is what you require, the DS-3000 is what you want. Not-so-oddly the DM-1 power switch is located on the rear of the device to lock the SmartMedia ejector. The only reason to turn off the DM-1 is to change the SmartMedia memory card. This is, in my opinion, the best device for recording lectures/notes and at the same time doubling as a high quality digital music player. And I didn't even touch on the WOW 3D SRS audio enhacements for musictends playback. Just don't use too much though. It may tend to distort slightly at max. 3D effect. I keep mine set at low to medium, and it sounds great. Take the DM-1 with a SmartMedia card full of high quality digital music and a set of Bose Quiet-comfort headphones on a trans-contennental flight and you're in heaven. I just wish that one could record notes while listening to music. That's when some of my best ideas come to me.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine for Mac users, too
Review: Here's what you do to download music directly from iTunes on your Mac to the DM-1: First find a friend with a Windows computer. Then install (if it's not already) MusicMatch Jukebox (comes with the DM-1). Next, follow the enclosed instructions to download ONE or TWO songs from MusicMatch Jukebox onto your new SmartMedia card in the DM-1. Then you disconnect from Windows and go straight to the Mac, hooking the DM-1 to it using the provided USB adapter cable. Now, for some reason, the SmartMedia card is formatted in a way that lets you transfer MP-3 files directly (I also recommend spending twenty bucks on a SmartMedia card reader, for faster and easier transfers, but it's not necessary). You can change the mix as many times as you want, trashing existing songs and adding new ones at will. I've talked to Olympus about this, and they don't have an explanation, but it seems that once a SmartMedia card has received a couple of MP-3's from MusicMatch Jukebox via Windows, iTunes on the Mac (or any other Mac MP3 player) is perfectly good (in fact, superior for ease of use) for transferring. Just drag the names of the songs from the library onto the icon for the DM-1. End of subject. (Except for the fact that the voice-recording player that you can download from the Olympus website works quite well, too.)
Rating:
Summary: DM-1 is great for data collection!
Review: I am currently using the DM-1 for data collection and I swear I will never go back to tape recorders. After downloading directly to your PC, you can transcribe directly into excel or Word without having to toggle between programs. Just hit F4 and it will play the next portion of the recorded session without bringing the Player window to the front. You can also choose an auto-setback amount so that you recheck your transcription of the previous segment. The file sizes for dss files (the proprietary file format) are incredibly small for audio files-which is wonderful also, and have great sound quality. Being able to change the dss files to wav files is an added bonus. The size of the DM-1 (smaller than a small cell phone!) and the fact that it doesnot eat batteries make this an exceptional piece of equipment for the researcher! I highly recommend this product for anyone who collects digital audio files that require transcribing! My only complaint is that the Mac Software is adequate but not as versatile.
Rating: 
Summary: Close, but short of the mark.
Review: I bought this recorder for use in professional dictation and found it wanting. Sound quality and storage capacity were fine. The files were set up to record a sequence of sounds one at a time (sound bites) but without being able to edit them once made. There was no way to listen to the recording during "rewind" to select a place to insert more words and in fact no way to append onto or change a filed recording once ended. "Fast forward" jumps to the next file. "Rewind" jumps to the previous file. The designers of the DM-1 did not have dictation primarily in mind for this product. I use the word 'rewind' in fond remembrance of tape recorders; some allowed you to hear a weak version of what you recorded during variable speed fast forward and rewind, allowing accurate and rapid finding of the spot you wanted to record over. Digital recorders potentially add the feature of being to "paste" new dictation in between existing words (impossible on tape w/o splicing). I'll keep watching for the digital voice recorder that keeps the best functions of analog tape recorders and adds the new functions unique to digital. Dr. E %^)
Rating:
Summary: Great recorder
Review: I bought this recorder to record lectures for my different college classes. The use of smartmedia cards make expanding the recording lenght easy, I have a 128 MB card and get 20 hours of recording time in the standard quality mode. To give you an example of the recording quality, I was listening to recorded lectures and kept hearing sounds that I couldn't identify. The sounds were the dings of the elevator out in the hall. The recorder was not only picking up clearly the lecture but sounds out in the hall way. Works great for recoding lectures.
Rating:
Summary: excellent product
Review: I compared this to the Olympus 330 which I had purchased at
circuit city for something like 140 or so. Got the DM-1 online
at pcuniverse for about 189, ordered yesterday and received Fedex
today.
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