While pretty much every PMP and mobile phone out there also offers users a voice recording feature, most of these products do so at a mainstream level, which will never do in the professional environment (such as the field of journalism, for example). And in order to cater to the needs of people who want a lot more out of their recorder, Japanese company Sony has unveiled the latest addition to its line of dedicated portable voice recorders, namely the PCM-M10 model.

As its name suggests, the PCM-M10 uses the Linear PCM (WAV) format in order to carry out audio recordings, while supporting various frequencies and bit rates, namely 96/48/44.1kHz 24/16 bit, 22.05kHz 16-bit, MP3 44.1kHz 320/128/64kbps. Playback support also includes the aforementioned format, as well as MP3 (bit rate :32-320kbps, VBR support), WMA (bit rate :32-192kbps, VBR support) and AAC (Bit rate support :16-320kbps, VBR support).

The recorder delivers a signal to noise ratio (SN ratio) of 87dB or more (1kHz IHF-A), 24-bit, while the maximum input sound pressure for the built-in microphone is rated at around 123dBSPL. Moreover, the M10 relies on its 4GB of internal Flash memory for storage purposes, but users can also easily add either Memory Stick Micro (M2) or microSD/microSDHC memory cards via a corresponding slot in order to increase the amount of available storage space.

Besides the above mentioned slot, the recorder sports several other connectivity options, including here microphone and line-in connectors, as well as line-out and headphone interfaces (which are actually one and the same). The device requires around 0.27 watts during normal functioning, the power being provided by 2 x AA batteries.

The gadget is also quite easy to carry around, since it measures 62.0 x 114.0 x 21.8mm and weighs around 187 grams. No idea about the pricing yet, but we should find out more when this thing hits the shelves across Japan, on October 21.


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