Olympus Digital Voice Recorder DM-420

I bought this to record forensic examinations I do. So people may be speaking quietly, whispering, crying etc. The initial couple of times I tried it, I could not get enough volume out of the internal mikes. I tried the different scene settings and still the sound wasn’t there. It wasn’t until I fought through the manual and found out how to use the monoraul zoom microphone setting that I was able to get acceptable sound from two people speaking in a modest size room. Which brings me to the manual. Of course, it’s only on disk, so you either have to read it on screen or print it out. And it’s written in Japanese English… “the functioning of the Euphony will be the sound enhanced.” Thereby, making it next to useless when trying to drill down through the various menu settings to try to make adjustments. Olympus is a huge company–you think they could afford an English speaking technical writer.

The software that comes with it seems to be first-rate, enabling all kinds of conversions, joins of separate files, volume-matching etc. It is very helpful in making adjustments for what is recorded.

One other point–I know websites are supposed to sell things, but I went to the Olympus site multiple times to see which of their digital recorders would do the job I needed done. The site is so loaded with praise for every product that it’s very hard to make a reasonable decision about which of their devices to buy. Is the $400 professional dictating one really the one I should have gotten? Why did this one win Hammacher-Schlemmer’s ‘best’ rating as opposed to the others? Would the $99 one have been as good?

I now own it and still have no idea if I got the right one.
Rating: 3 / 5

The Olympus DM420 is an excellent recorder. The control buttons and menus are very easy to use. Even the battery compartment very well designed and much easier to use than anything else I’ve seen. The display shows the battery level and plenty of information about the settings in use during recording and playback, as well as the timestamp. It is an excellent recorder for both voice and line input. Although not advertised or specified as having a line input, it is sensitive enough to accept a tape out signal using the microphone input, so that there is no need to worry about setting the volume level of the earphone output of the radio being recorded. The pdf instruction manual is stored in the memory and can be copied to your computer for learning all the options not obvious on the screen menu. I had to read the manual to understand the settings related to using the USB connection for file transfer versus external power for recording or playback. Another useful feature not indicated in the published specifications and reviews I had seen, is the ability to program the recorder to record at three separate times with various settings for program length and quality. The feature of this recorder most important for my choosing it over others is the ample playback speaker which produces enough volume, with 320 mW power output, for listening without earphones, and still, the replaceable, rechargeable batteries last many days between charges.

Rating: 5 / 5

I needed this primarily for recording personal coaching sessions both in person and on the phone. I wanted a stereo recorder that saved files in a non-proprietary format such as WMA, and I needed it to run on an external AC power supply as well as on batteries. This is one of very few recorders that meets those requirements.

At first I was disappointed because, out of the box, you cannot make recordings while it’s plugged in to the power supply. The default configuration assumes that when the USB connector is plugged in to the power supply, you are really doing file transfer rather than recording. In this respect, my old Olympus DS-40 is better, because the external power supply connects to a mini power jack, not the USB port. Another non-intuitive difficulty I encountered in using the power supply is that it will NOT recharge the internal batteries unless you hold the “STOP” button down while plugging in the power supply.

It takes some digging through the PDF manual hidden in one of the recorders file folders to discover the “USB Connect” configuration settings, where I was able to change the configuration to ask on startup whether I was charging the device in PC mode or in recorder mode. The quick start printed manual does not contain that information. Frankly, I prefer the intuitive simplicity of the separate power connector on the old DS-40. Also, the DM-420 manual says you cannot leave regular alkaline batteries in place while running the recorder on the power supply, and yet the power supply does not work if the batteries are removed. My old DS-40 can run on the power supply with batteries removed, and it doesn’t care if the batteries are regular or rechargeable because it’s not trying to recharge them. So, having the capability of recharging batteries inside the DM-420 is a mixed blessing. Because I use the recorder in my office always connected to the power supply, I’ve almost eliminated my contribution of dead batteries to the environment.

Over all, the operation of the external power supply in simply recharging batteries, or making recordings while on the power supply, or operating as a replacement for completely dead or missing batteries, or recharging the batteries while connected to the PC via the USB cable and transferring recordings, is very non-intuitive and requires careful reading of the manual. It shouldn’t be this difficult, because my HTC smart phone, which I also use as a recording and playback device, is completely transparent to use of the external power supply/charger which also connects via the USB port.

My use of the recorder is not completely restricted to the office. I carry it to the gym, on walks and on the airplane in order to listen to music and books on tape. With the microSD card slot, I can carry hundreds of hours of audio.

The quality of audio from WMA music files that I copied to the device are excellent, and the stereo recordings I’ve made in the office are excellent (using two separate left/right microphones connected to a stereo to mono Y splitter). Recordings made from the phone are monophonic, but also quite clear, being limited by the phone line quality not the recorder.

I strongly advise any purchasers of this device to at least skim through the detailed (128 page) PDF manual that’s hidden in a folder on the recorder itself. The recorder can be highly configured to a wide variety of different recording and playback possibilities, and if you don’t read the manual, you will definitely be missing out on a lot of possibilities. I copied the PDF file to my PC and printed the whole thing out using the duplex and 2-up paper saver settings on my printer – it was well worth the effort, and only cost 32 sheets of paper.

By the way, the external AC power supply/charger (Olympus A514) is NOT included with the DM-420 recorder being reviewed here. You must order it separately. Otherwise, you are limited to recharging the batteries of the DM-420 by plugging it into the USB port of a computer.

In conclusion, I think this is a great little recording and playback device, in spite of the faults found in its user interface. The complex user interface conceals a great degree of flexible configurability, accessible only by careful reading of both the quick-start and hidden manuals. If you are one of those folks who never read the owner’s manual, I’d hesitate to recommend this device to you.

Rating: 4 / 5