My Gagdets: Sony ICD-PX440 Digital Dictation Machine

As I seem to remember, in the early years of this blog, this blogger (aka "me") was fond of writing to catalog various stuff, such gadgets or radios.

So to continue with the tradition, here is another entry - this time in My Gadgets series and the subject is my Sony ICD-PX440 Digital Dictation Machine, aka a Dictaphone that I bought a number of years ago, like 5 or even 6 already.

I wanna describe it briefly and then I wanna give you an overview of some uses that it can be put to. 

Well, "machine" may be too big a word for it - it is just a little digital device to records sounds, such as music or even the wonder of human speech, in a digital format aka mp3 files.

 

It may not be immediately obvious in this day and age, but it is a very useful thing, however not for its original stated purpose which is using it in a dictation mode.

Though I did that too when the circumstances called - I used it to record telephone conversations when the need arose for me to have some proof of what was being said and by whom.

You just put your cell phone on speaker phone and record the deluge of abuse, threats, blackmail and extortion attempts haha, I hope not. 

Yet this original purpose of the device is not how I have used it most often.

I also have other uses in mind for it.

First, for a radio hobbyist as myself, the proof of which can be found on my radio blog (from where this post is actually reposted), it would be useful to record radio reception which in theory can be done both using an audio in and a dictophone function via inbuilt microphone.

Again I have not yet used it for that particular purpose to date as it appears more expedient now to use your mobile phone in a video recording mode and you can also record the radio display indication.

Where it comes very useful indeed and has been used by myself exclusively and extensively, is to digitize past radio reception recordings that I have on a number of cassette tapes dating back to the 1990s.

It works great for this purpose but you have to purchase separately a double ended audio-in jack cable (or something) and I have a Belkin, shown on some of the pictures.

All my past radio reception recordings mentioned on my radio blog have been digitized using this little Sony device, and I generally have been happy with it when using it for this purpose. 

Similarly, it solves the problem of digitizing your cassette tapes archives, including music, of course, and/or other programs.

Last but not least, you could in theory use this machine to borrower music off the internet that you happen to take a fancy too. 

But remember to do it strictly for personal use, of course.

For example, if you hear something nice, something that captures your imagination and have the composition's name and title you can typically find it on Youtube for example, or on other sites that play the composition.

Then you or whoever just plug this thing in an Audio out on the laptop and the record the culprit. 

The quality is usually pretty good, it records at 192 kbps (or something) which is CD quality I believe; and it's a lot safer than using various illegal downloaders.

 

Then you would use the USB connection on the device to transfer the sound file to the computer and then on to your mp3 player device.

Bingo! Job well done!

And still another application I can think of, and have actually used it for, is to record my occasional living-room Karaoke attempts, it's a bit cumbersome when used for that purpose but still works.

 

llya's Radio Shack: My Radio Related Equipment: Sony ICD-PX440 Digital...: In my radio related equipment series, here is my Sony ICD-PX440 Digital Dictation Machine, aka a Dictophone.   It may not be immediately obv...