What kind of attached microphone are you using attached to the iRiver 795?
Certainly your not talking about the built in mic? And its in Sync and evertyhing? So this is sort of like using an iPod with the voice recorder add on?

Tyson,

I use Giant Squid mics exclusively with my irivers. A guy named Darren has been making these exclusively for the irivers (do a search and you'll find out much more info as to why) for quite a while now.

Anyway they are superb for voice recording and some acoustic music recordings like guitar or piano.

As to another post about the irivers recording in the ".rec" format, it's really no big deal. The iriver manager converts it over to .mp3 after downloading it to the computer automatically. Alternately I think I've renamed the file from .rec to .mp3 and that has worked also.

As to doing things through the iriver manager vs. updating firmware and getting much lower resolution, I'll just stick with the manager since I like everything at least at 192kbps - sometimes higher with music.

Yes, it is a very slight bother to do this, but with the quality of sound I get with these things for event videography, it's unbelievably fast, easy, and inexpensive to say the least. I'll never go back to minidisc!

Yep, after much poking around the net, it seems like the manager firmware is the way to go. Faster uploads, and no bitrate limitation. Also, as Brandon mentioned, the .REC files are simply mp3 files and can be renamed as such.

That doesn't seem so bad I guess. The only tradeoff is having to use the manager as an extra step. Not a big deal. So I think I'll pick one up on ebay and give it a try.

Olympus Digital Voice Recorder DS-30
 

The Olympus Digital Voice Recorder DS-30 should be OK.
Its freqency response is 50Hz - 18000Hz and I think this is enough for avearage sound quality.

I've been using 2 of the Olympus DS-330 models for the past two years in place of wireless mics. You'll get better sound quality from a wireless mic, but I switched because I was constantly running into sound interference with my wireless mics. That can't happen with my DVR's.

I am looking to upgrade now, though. The sound quality is not bad, but I would like better. I was originally looking at the VN-4100PC, because it has 2 higher quality settings above SP (which the DS-330 only has SP and LP). However, I think now I may switch to the DS-30 because it captures a much broader range.

I also have had to deal with the audio not syncing with my video, but you just have to slow it down to like 99.77% and it matches up fine for the entire video. The audio quality doesn't suffer from this either.

iriver firmware
 

Monday Isa,

Hello. I also have a couple of i-Rivers, the 7xx family, same as yours. What's the version no or release of this firmware? Where did you get the firmware? I would like to upgrade mine so I don't have to pass through irivers software.

Thanks!

-Mel

Firmware
 

I'd like to know what older version of firmware that you all are running (the ones not limited to 96kbps).

I bought an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder, and ended up taking it back for a refund because I was so disappointed with the sound quality. I tried it wtih a decent external mic, and concluded that it was not of a standard I could use for film sound.

Read back a few posts. You really don't want to upgrade to the new firmware.

You probably bought a lower quality model with a narrow frequency response range. I use 2 of the DS-30 models, and they have excellent sound (range is like 50-19,000 on the highest quality setting).