Olympus LS-3

En enastående apparat. För att göra denna apparat rättvisa känner jag att jag skulle behöva skriva en hel del, vilket jag gjort fast på engelska på Amazon UK, där den också är billigast, i alla fall från vårt perspektiv. Fri frakt dessutom. Så för dem som är intresserade, är här en kopia. Jag ber om ursäkt för att den är på engelska. En dag kanske jag skriver om den.

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The product is extremely well thought out and full of no-nonsense engineering. Sound-wise it's amazing what you get for the money. Considering that you would get a good mp3-player (which it also servers as) in the pre-iPod era for the same amount a few years ago, this offers so much more. It has the quality and air of a Japanese electronic product of the 80's, and that's so rare these days of built-to-not-last electronics. It's very well built and has an aluminium casing, while at the same time being very small and light, makes very good recordings and standard AAA batteries (Ni-MH supplied) last a very long time and charge while connected to the computer. The longest I've recorded was in total 6 hours (MP3) and the indicator still showed all bars.

There are physical buttons for all important tasks relating to recording and reviewing. No hunting in menus for common tasks (like on the Zoom Q3, which is priced similarly). Compared to the Q3, which makes high-quality recording too but is lacking in most other respects, this product is a miracle come true.

The things I appreciate most (and they are many, among the even many more present) is the ability to easily, and while recording, set microphone sensitivity, recording level and mic zoom feature (which by some electronic trickery makes it possible to set how wide stereo stage to encompass), easy cutting features (both PCM and MP3), the record prepare feature, the 2 second pre-recording feature, button and menu layout, battery life, the tripod mounting hole and of course the recording quality.

I used it to record our choir in a large church and placed it on a tripod approximately 5 meters in front. It wonderfully captured both the preceding outside church-bells as well as the 50-people choir at full power (microphone was set to low sensitivity and recording level at 11, it peaked a few times).

There's one thing I'd change if I could and that would be the mini-USB socket to a micro-USB socket. Most devices these days use micro-USB which is supposedly more durable and is compatible with contemporary mobile phone chargers and which mobile phone producers have standardised on. In view of all the good things that comes with the package it comes across as a minor thing. Still to alleviate this I ordered a micro->mini USB-adapter on eBay for a dollar.

It comes with a snugly fitting pouch, USB cable and NiMH batteries. There's a quick-start manual but the full manual is in PDF format only.