Basic voice recording: Phone recorder or portable recorder?

Special Interest Groups Recording Equipment
1

I want to buy some cheap equipment to increase the quality of my voice recordings. I know almost nothing about audio recording and processing.

I make a few voice recordings a week: I record my weekly sessions with my therapist, my dreams, and some conversations with people. All at an absolutely amateur level and only for personal use.

Currently I use the recorder of my cell phone, which is a quite old Nokia XpressMusic (this is a budget model that is 5-6 years old). The recorder of this phone is obviously intended for extremely basic uses. The quality of the recordings is quite poor, it records in AMR format, which must be the lowest quality sound format ever.

I want to get a recorder that gives me better quality. I need something that is very portable. At the same time, I also want to buy a new phone for normal use. So my question is: Should I buy a phone with a good recorder or is it better to buy a phone and a recorder separately (or maybe a phone and a microphone)?

I prefer a cell phone with a good quality recorder because that’s more portable, but if that’s not available or too expensive, a portable recorder is also fine.

Thanks

2

Please give some idea of budget.

3

About 100 € (I live in Ireland).

4

Have a look at the little Zoom recorders.
I have a Zoom H2 which I’m very happy with, though it is a bit outside your budget. Zoom make some smaller ones that are cheaper.

5

That’s a Zoom H2. I believe they say so in one of the postings.

Here it is.

Merci beaucoup! It is a Zoom H2, only cost about 150 USD.

Koz

6

Ha, ha, I think that I didn’t explain myself very well. My budget is 100 € for both the recorder AND the phone. So I’m thinking about spending 50 € in an average phone and another 50 € in a recorder, or 100 € in a phone with a good recorder. That Zoom H2 looks absolutely terrific, but it is beyond my budget, and I don’t really need that much quality, anyway.

7

My budget is 100 € for both the recorder AND the phone.

[blank look]

Why would you need the phone?

Koz

8

Buy a Nokia 100 :wink:

9

I need to buy a phone anyway (the one I have now is about to fall apart). If I can find a phone that has a good quality recorder incorporated, I don’t need to buy a recorder separately. Then I can spend 100 € in the phone alone. If that’s not possible, I will spend around 50 € on the phone and the other 50 € on the recorder.

10

I guess this is a joke. But seriously, the main goal of my thread is to find out if there are cell phones that have decent (not professional) recording quality, or it’s essential to use a standard recorder to get decent quality.