Text Review of the PTR2

I have written a short text review of the Plextalk PTR2 if anyone is interested in reading it.  The review contains links to useful resources relating to the product.

 

The Plextalk PTR2

Here is a message I wrote to the mailing list of the British Computer Association of the Blind concerning the Plextalk PTR2. 

 

I thought a lot about whether I wanted an Edirol R09 from Roland or the Plextalk PTR2 available from RNIB and for what I want to be able to do, I decided that the Plextalk for me was the better unit. Clearly this recorder is larger than the R09, and it is a DAISY recorder and the built-in microphone is certainly not as good as the R09. However, especially when used with an external microphone or sound mixer, this is a wonderful piece of equipment.

 

I wanted a recorder allowing me to produce material in daisy format if required (which it is quite often), which also gives me the ability to store large quantities of recordings without the need to connect it to a PC or use a card reader within a computer to transfer the material, and which gives me extremely comprehensive audio editing capabilities without the need again to use a computer.

 

The PTR2 gives me all of that and a lot more. I have a 6 GB storage card which gives me approximately 105 hours of recording storage using MP3 128K stereo, or a variety of other time lengths depending upon the file format and bit rate I choose to use during recording.

 

The biggest advantage of the PTR2 of course is that it speaks everything. This includes the recording level status, the elapsed time of a recording, battery status, whether you are in record mode or record/pause mode – as I say all its features. Best of all, this information can be heard through headphones without intruding into the audio recording which is incredibly useful.

 

One of the other functions I have found invaluable is that you cannot only edit material after the recording is made, but also during the recording process. For example, if I make a mistake during recording, I can go back and overwrite the material. In addition, if I decide after recording the spoken output that I want to insert a table of contents, I can do that just by navigating to the point in the recording where it should be placed, and start the recording.  Everything I record is inserted; the machine does not overwrite the recording already made.

 

In summary, this machine gives me the ability to record material and edit it on the storage card, and then without the need for any external devices, write the finished product to audio or DAISY CD. Moreover, at least if I was in a conference-like situation, I could guarantee the output of my recording was going to be of a high quality and could make appropriate adjustments for example to the recording level should I need to. I would also be able to mark sections of importance either during or after the recording process which would be very useful for reference purposes.

 

From my Portable Player Portal web site, I shall be creating a page containing links to resources about the PTR2.