The MyVoice DMR-1635 is a solid voice recorder with a few niggling format issues. Read our Australian review.

We've seen a recent spate of USB Storage Devices/MP3 players that have integrated voice recording capabilities, such as the Acer MagicDrive and Creative Nomad MuVo NX. The EFx MyVoice DMR-1635 Voice Recorder takes the alternate tack; it's a voice recorder that has MP3 playback capabilities. While its voice recording capabilities should be enough for any tastes, it's hampered by a mediocre software offering and the use of a proprietary file format.

The MyVoice DMR-1635 looks like many other similar digital voice recorders; it's a thin stubby unit, longer than most USB solid storage devices. At 30 x 107 x 17mm it will slip into a shirt pocket with only a slight amount of protrusion, and at 30g (plus the weight of two AAA batteries) it's light enough to be unobtrusive.

The left hand side of the unit houses standard headphone and microphone sockets, as well as a hold switch and USB port. Unlike most USB storage devices, the DMR-1635 lacks a dedicated USB plug; instead it ships with a cable. The front facing of the unit houses three buttons; one for play/stop, one for recording/pausing and one for erasing files on the unit.The right hand side houses volume and track skipping buttons as well as a menu button. The display on the 1635 is bright but lacks the fine detail of units such as the Nomad MuVo NX. It will take some getting used to the button layout on the DMR-1635, as the menu button is used both to skip between functions and to confirm choices.

Aside from a pair of ordinary bud heaphones, the DMR-1635 also comes with a clip-on external microphone that compliments the internal microphone nicely. The manual mentions a telephone recording device, but the errata notes that this isn't actually shipped in the locally available version, which is probably for the best given Australia's rather strict privacy and telephone regulations.

The supplied software -- drivers, SkyManager downloading software and Voice Edit Wizard are easy enough to install, and without installing all of them, you won't be able to see your files or listen to them outside the device itself. Unlike every other storage device out there, the DMR-1635 doesn't directly show up as a drive under Windows Explorer. Without running Skymanager, there's no way to see the drive, whether you want to upload voice samples or download files or MP3s.

The best reason to get the DMR-1635 is without a doubt if you need to take advantage of its lengthy recording capabilities; it's capable of recording up to 35 hours of audio, although there is a catch. With only 128MB of storage on board, cramming 35 hours of recording capability can only be done by lowering the bitrate to an extreme degree. This is fine if you're just recording snippets of interviews, but less desireable for any other audio source, especially music. Recording some live music with the device we found that the lowered bitrate made it particularly susceptible to very bad clipping and distortion.

The other side-effect of the DMR-1635's extremely low bitrates is that it uses a proprietary file format. The supplied software can read and playback these files, but as an archival format it's a big drawback; by comparison the Acer MagicDrive records to standard (albeit low bitrate) .WAV files, playable by just about everything out there. The supplied Voice Edit Wizard software can convert the DMR-1635's .DVW files to MP3 format, but this is an irritating extra step to take if you want to archive any audio you might record.

When in MP3 playback mode, you can pick from 5 equaliser presets -- again by careful manipulation of the menu button. The supplied speaker is inevitably quite tinny, but the output through the headphone socket is much improved with a good pair of headphones, and less impressive with the bundled pair.

EFxMyVioice DMR-1635
Company: EFx
Price: ~AU$250
Distributor: Selected resellers

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