Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony TCM-200DV Standard Cassette Voice Recorder

I use this for class to record lectures. I sit in the front and I pick up adequate amplification. However, if someone in the 4th through 6th row asks a question, it is a difficult to hear. During playback, I have to turn up the volume on those sections.

A few things I wish I had were
* a LED light signalling that I was recording. I have accidently forgotten to press the record button and just hit play. So, I have dead air.
*Auto shutoff when I am recording and get to the end of the tape. It doesn't shut off and it makes this screeching (but not too loud) noise when it hits the end of the tape. Which is kind of embarrasing. i have to pay attention to where the tape is at, which you can see through the window.
* It doesn't have a counter on it, so if I am taking notes, I can't write down the position I am at during the note taking.

Yet, for the price, I got what I paid for. It is a decent recorder. I have no complaints, only suggestions I want to get when I upgrade to another recorder.

Wouldn't you think a product whose title reads "with Dual Power Source" would actually include the AC adapter? Not in this case, although I can order one separately.

If you in fact want the AC adapter to arrive in the same package as your cassette recorder, be sure you order the Sony TCM-210DV, which I now understand is the model I should have ordered. The TCM-210DV appears to be identical to the TCM-200DV but includes the AC adapter.

Although I don't have the AC adapter I wanted as insurance for the occasions on which I record on tape, the recorder performs just fine on battery. I use it primarily to play audiobooks from the public library, because a Walkman or other play-only motor is not powerful enough for old, worn cassettes.

This is a nice little recorder and the price is right. I got it for my folks because they wanted to be able to record my niece and nephew and because the new digital technology was a little overwhelming. This is a very sturdy little player/recorder, easy to use, and great if you still have cassettes lying around.

I am in charge of fixing the horrible distortions
that happen in converting low-sample-rate recordings of poetry
readings from a camera to MP3 (terrible kazoo buzzing noise).

I discovered that good old analog tape, via an attenuating patchcord (-60db), convert very smoothly, and the PCM/16-bit 11khz audio format even rolls off tape hiss and keeps a beautiful natural tone. Using an electret microphone outboard also gets rid of the tape machine motor noise.

Anyway, I got this TCM-200DV at Target on sale for $25 to
back up the garage-sale recorder I was using. The first
wonderful surprise was that you can plug a common
external-powered PC condenser mic straight in! Sony
says they supply the bias, and they aren't fooling.
The level is quite sensitive too; excellent for poetry
at 1-2 ft distance, so 'pops' are avoided. The sound is
brilliant, even at the half-speed. I would have gladly
traded that for a tape counter. I am worried about
how all the switches dealing with the tape speed will age,
but I'll keep the thing in a bag to avoid dust.
The 25-hr batt life is cool.
Analog recordings of speaking events are very important at this
time, since the true 24-bit//96khz PCM recorders needed to
avoid conversion distortions are still very expensive. This
recorder does a super job for voice, and is a great feed
to the PC for digital recording. If I had to make it
perfect (albeit for a little more money), I would
drop the mutlispeed, add a counter, and add a
pop-up microphone wand with mechanical isolation from
vibrations (a PC mic on folded fleece suffices now).
A side-monitor (2 earphone plugs) would be nice too.

Thanks for saving my poetry group from hellacious distant
camera audio recordings, Sony!

So far I have no reason to think this is not the high Sony quality we are used to. And the price was very reasonable.

The 15/16ths IPS speed has gotten hard to find; Radio Shack no longer stocks them, so the quick local in-person pickup of a recorder that does half speed is gone; on-line seems to be the way to go. This recorder has it. When my clients sent me half-speed tapes and my old recorder that had this capability failed, I had to hustle to find this one.

The machine's failure to have a head-adjustment hole in the case is one shortcoming, hence my four rather than five rating. Many other makes and models do have this; others I have to modify with a small saw to give me this adjustment ability, which can make a large difference in playback quality (typically when the machine a tape was recorded on is slightly differently aligned than the playback machine).

The "dual power source" capability being highlighted I find "curious," because it seems to me that DC (battery) or AC (AC-to-DC adapter) capability is a standard feature. It may be becoming less standard than we have gotten used to, though, particularly in the very small digital recorders, which are the wave of the future (and present), which I assume is why Radio Shack's (as a "for instance") line of cassette recorders is dwindling, as their line of digital recorders grows.

So, on-line shopping and buying is the way to go. And maybe buy an extra item or two to put "into inventory" for when the machine you're using fails and you don't want a one or two-day delay in your work schedule while you wait for the UPS or FedEx truck to arrive.