Does anyone know of an mp3 player that records to .mp3 format (not .wav)?
You could look for a used Zoom H2, which is primarily a recorder rather than player, and costs $200 new, but otherwise does everything you want. It plays and records mp3, but is more oriented for convenient recording than for playlist navigation. It also has 4 built in microphones, with a four channel recording mode (that conveniently records to 2 seperate stereo files, front and rear). I am not sure about battery life, but it runs on standard AA batts with variable battery life depending on recording quality – the primary thing sucking juice is the disk usage, so lower bitrates = longer life (I can’t help you much on how long the batteries last, because I record high sampling rate 4 channel uncompressed, which is the fastest battery consuming mode).
Definitely try to see if you can find one of the older mp3 players from Cowon. I love my iAudio G3 — it’s an older flash player that seems to be hard to find now, but you might find something turning up on ebay or from a reseller. I got mine as a gift a few years ago, and still use it practically every day (mostly to play mp3s, but I also use the voice recorder). It came in various capacities but there was a 1-gb model (which I have) and later a 2-gb model. • Records directly to mp3: yes. • Can record at various quality levels: yes. It can record either in wav or mp3, and you can set separate quality settings for recording voice (built-in mic), line-in or radio. The mp3 bitrates offered are 96kbps, 112kbps (IIRC) and 128 kbps. The mp3s made from the built-in mic are mono-only. • Line input for recording: yes (I haven’t used this yet, though, so I can’t comment on the feature). • Playback time of more than 12 hours: yes. The
I have the same question and just stumbled on this thread. I have a Cowon iAudio x5 that records directly to mp3, and it works well (but too expensive to be an answer for this question). I have it dual booted with Rockbox but find the stock Cowon firmware to be much easier to use than Rockbox for voice recording. Bummer to hear they’ve dropped mp3 recording in newer products. I’m currently in need of a second device for voice recording to mp3 and haven’t found anything that meets the main criteria of being relatively cheap. Panasonic seems to rule the world of dedicated voice recorders, but their lower end ones won’t connect to a PC with USB, which is fairly key for extracting them for playback elsewhere.
