Recording - September 2010 - 46

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Sanyo Xacti Sound Recorder

ICR-XPS01M
There’s portable, and then there’s tiny, and then...!
Sanyo surprised many people in its NAMM debut this past January. Besides eco-friendly Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery technology (including the Pedal Juice, a portable battery pack that can reliably run a whole line of guitar stomp boxes), Sanyo showed prototypes of the Xacti recorders, intended not only for voice recording but also for music. The model reviewed here, the ICR-XPS01M, is the first to ship. The recorder itself is the ICR-XPS01M; add an “F” to the end, and that’s the recorder sold together with a multifunction cradle unit that charges the recorder (without the cradle, it charges via USB) and provides an array of four small powered speakers that provide good-quality playback for casual listening in a small space. With or without the F, that name’s an unpronounceable mouthful, so I’ll refer to it as the “Xacti” in this review. This product begs the question: how small can a portable digital audio recorder get before it’s just too small? Let’s find out. In the box At 38.3 x 96.3 x 9.4 mm (roughly 1.5 x 3.75 x 0.375 inches) and 46 grams (under 2 ounces) fully loaded, this recorder could almost slide into your wallet with your credit cards. It’s impeccably crafted and feels surprisingly solid despite its tiny size, fitting well in the hand with all of its controls easily reachable with a thumb. The Xacti has a pair of shockmounted omni mics mounted in its top corners for stereo recording, and 1/8" TRS jacks along its top edge for headphones and an external stereo microphone or line input. A sliding door on the left edge hides the sockets for the microUSB connector and microSD card, and there’s a proprietary jack on the bottom edge for connection to the cradle. The back of the unit has the battery door and a tiny speaker, suitable for button-press beeps and to make sure you actually recorded something. A sliding switch on the right side of the unit provides power on/off and control Hold, and the front of the unit has three buttons for Scene/Guide, Record, and Stop, plus an array of nine membrane switches (Plus, Minus, Play/OK, Forward, Backward, Back, Menu, List, and Mode) that are only
46
RECORDING SEPTEMBER 2010

visible when the unit’s powered on. This is a good mix; the feel of the Record and Stop buttons is reassuringly solid, and pressing the other buttons while recording (e.g. the Mode button to set Markers) is noiseless. The Xacti comes with earbuds, a microUSB cable (don’t lose it, it’s a proprietary connector), a rechargeable battery (14 hours WAV recording time, way more for MP3), a 2 GB microSD card that will hold about 3 hours of 16-bit/44.1 kHz WAV audio, and a huge 200-page manual. There’s no remote, nor is there any provision for mounting the Xacti on a stand. Last but not least is the cluttered but informative OLED display, which is relatively easy to read even at a distance and shows everything from level meters, battery charge, recording time elapsed, and mic sensitivity settings, to remaining storage space and which folder the current audio file is in. Going to work Before starting to record, you’ll need some prep time with the Xacti’s manual to really understand everything this gizmo can do... partly because the controls are so small and multifunction (the manual has six pages just devoted to flow charts explaining what’s in all the menus!), but also because the Xacti does so darn much. Besides recording from internal or external stereo mics or line-level sources at MP3 formats from 64 to 320 kbps or 16-bit/44.1 kHz WAV, the Xacti can act as a portable music player, playing back MP3s from 16 to 320 kbps or WMA files from 32 to 192 kbps (it can’t play back WAV files it hasn’t recorded itself). Recorded files are organized by input source: four folders of Mic and one of Line with up to 199 files each. Built-in recording functions include manual mic sensitivity control or Auto Level Control, a Peak Limiter, a Low Cut Filter, voice activated recording, a timer, Auto Divide (creating new files after 2 seconds of silence), and more. Note that a lot of these functions are designed for speech intelligibility rather than music quality; the Low Cut Filter, for instance, has a 300 Hz corner frequency. The Xacti offers a choice of six Scenes— preset selections of these parameters,

optimized for recording interviews, meetings, music, or audio from other devices. Scenes can be customized, though not renamed, so you could convert unused Scenes into something handier. For example, the Music Scene has no Peak Limiter; I converted Interview into a clone of the Music settings, but with the Peak Limiter turned on. If you hold the Xacti by the edges, handling noise is minimal, but the back face picks up vibration so you have to be careful what you set it down on. There’s a Wide Stereo option, but using it will be a matter of taste and application, as it may sound artificially wide with less of a phantom center in many cases. A 5-band graphic eq comes with eight settings—flat, six presets and one user-created curve. You can noiselessly set up to 36 Markers during recording with a touch of the Mode button. There are built-in record and playback timers, adjustable playback speed with no pitch change, A-B loop, file divide functions, search by recording time within a file, rapid forward and backward time skip, playlist and folder organization functions for casual listening (the Music folder can

Recording - September 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2010