14 DAY TRIAL // Usually, when people need to keep something in mind they write it down somewhere. Or dictate it to somebody or ? something. Since computers have begun to take care of more and more aspects in our lives, acting as a dictaphone was just a matter of time. The Personal Digital Voice Recorder is sworn to record anything you need to keep, whether it's reminders and notes, novels, jokes or just simple ideas. Again though, nothing sensational, not even something to make you say a faint "wow!"
The GUI
This Personal Digital Voice Recorder has a casual UI, very windowsy, as a matter of fact it seems more like another extension interface for the sound recorder. Few control buttons, like Play-Pause-Stop-Record, a mute switch and the voice-triggered recording. 2 sliders, for the master volume and one for the noise level that triggers recording in the automated mode, complete the transport controls pane.
Below these command section is some sort of graph that shows you some "sine curve" as recording progresses. I said sine curve because this is how it's named; the Personal Digital Voice Recorder shows some yellow marks over and below a central line that resemble to what a decent audio editor would show in similar situations. Needless to say that this graph is totally useless... The buttons have two graphical modes: a normal one and the "Glyph" one, some 3D enhancement and a purple bordering.
At the bottom of the applications window is the thing that makes Personal Digital Voice Recorder differ from the Windows Sound Recorder: an explorer-type table to easily access your stored notes. This table also contains some additional information such as starting time, duration, bit rate, size and so on. All of which is quite useful when you really use the software and have recorded a large number of notes.
Overall, the graphics for Personal Digital Voice Recorder are rather dull and very sober ...too sober, I'd say. It seemed to me that this program has had its interface designed in great haste, and that no one cared to give it a personal touche or some brighter ideas. Nevertheless, it's not at all ugly and it is functional, and this is good.
The features
There are 2 main features for this Personal Digital Voice Recorder: the recorder and the player. As each of them is very crude and very simple, and don't benefit from noise/hiss reduction, the final result will depend on your soundcard and the environmental noises. The recording has several modes, 8-bit and 16-bit, sampling from 4 to 11.025, therefore between 3.9 kbps and 21.5 kbps, enough to ensure a small size-output wav file. Moreover, the player has no other control than the one for volume. This lack of any additional control features suggests that Personal Digital Voice Recorder is meant to be just an "audio notepad" and nothing more.
In the unregistered version, the initial voice-over is ultra-annoying and has a huge level, so I became quite nervous when testing it, because of the constant screaming at the beginning of the recorded tracks.
One good thing about it is that this little program has 2 assignable shortcuts: a key combination you choose to start the recording and one to stop it.
I tried to make the voice-triggered recording work and I did not succeed. Maybe it's a feature available in the registered version only; anyway it seems to be correctly programmed. Audio settings refer exactly to the Windows audio settings so the Personal Digital Voice Recorder has no such settings itself. It's neither the place nor the case to describe the Windows' audio settings...
The main impression that this Personal Digital Voice Recorder left me is that is just some other interface for the Sound Recorder, as I've said before. The library that allows you to keep and eye and sort a bit on your recorded notes is the nicest thing, along with the fact that one can record longer tracks than in the Windows' standard application.
The Good
The user can easily access the files recorded, sort them and play them back, straight from the program's dedicated panel. The voice-triggered recording (dictaphone) is one cool feature, I presume.
The Bad
Nothing really bad about the Personal Digital Voice Recorder; it's just that it's almost dull and featureless. Some noise reduction or EQ would be quite welcome, I suppose. On the other hand, for 25.95 USD one might ask for a more careful GUI, a bit more polishing to get a professional look. Everybody knows it's not professional, but at least it looks great. Let's face it: it's a common thought pattern and a commercial law!
The Truth
If the Sound Recorder provided by the OS isn't really enough, one might think about buying the Personal Digital Voice Recorder. The software works ok, so be confident in using it! If you're a writer and you want to dictate I suggest you get a good condenser mic, though.
