Review: Gemini iKEY Plus USB Digital Audio Recorder

This is a multimedia Gallery, so as well as still images you can find video and audio clips and other goodies.

However, though I can snap away with my camera to gather images and video, for example, the Gallery has sorely lacked any consistent way of gathering snippets of audio. The best I have been able to do in the past has usually been an "audio memo" on a previous Sony MAVICA, or maybe the voice recorder on my mobile phone; neither great bandwidth nor signal 'quality'.

For the Gallery I need something relatively portable (eg battery-powered, small and light) that I can carry with me most of the time to catch ambient or unexpected sounds, that does not need to be connected up to (say) a laptop to operate, that saves audio in formats easy for me to edit and for Gallery users to download and use, and that records to a medium that is easy for me to access in a number of ways, eg not tied to one expensive computer or operating system or manufacturer. And I don't want to spend hundreds on something too complex for me to even understand!

With those constraints in mind I saw this review of the iKEY Plus portable direct-to-USB digital audio recorder in The Register, which looked pretty good for Gallery purposes, even if not quite the target DJ/musician market.

The immediate plus points of the iKEY Plus for me:

• Not expensive ~£115 (GBP115/USD200) when I bought it from the very helpful djkit.co.uk site (tel:+44(0)1635-580448).
• Small (can go in a biggish pocket) and using ordinary AA rechargables, and has a soft pouch to avoid scratches.
• Stereo recording with small microphone supplied.
• Can record in a variety of MP3 encoding rates (128kbps to 320kbps) up to uncompressed CD-quality (44.1kHz) stereo WAV.
• Can record directly onto a USB memory stick, which I can read directly on a Mac or Windows laptop for example, for editing and upload. This worked perfectly with the first one I took out of my toolbox!
• Relatively simple to use.
• Works "out of the box" using the mains power adaptor.

Some immediate weaknesses/annoyances:

• Quite tricky understanding which buttons to press to start with; I think I'll be able to manage without lugging the instruction manual around but I'm not sure. Maybe they could put a sticker with a minimal set of "quick start" instructions on the back like (say) Sun do with their multi-thousand-dollar computer boxes? Saves a lot of head-scratching.
• Seems to need to be turned off and on after inserting a USB memory stick to recognise it.
• Needs to have the REC key held down for 3 seconds to flush recordings to the USB stick; why not have it do so automatically after a small period of inactivity?
  
• The anti-wind-noise microphone covers fall off at the slightest provocation, so I've resorted to an ugly elastic band to hold them on!
• Would be nice if the unit was even smaller and lighter, say candy-bar mobile-phone size.
• I will probably need to get a self-powered dynamic mic to get really good recordings, especially of relatively quiet sounds such as bird-song.

Here are the first few test/calibration recordings taken with it:

• Hello, hello, hello! MP3.
• Ambient noise commuting by train from the London "stockbroker belt"! Again, MP3.
• Ambient noise while waitng for, getting on, and departing on a newish London "Tube" train. Again, MP3.
• A baby girl still learning to talk. WAV 'CD-quality' lossless encoding.
• Ambient sound samples in enclosed public spaces. WAV.

All pictures of the iKey Plus.

Damon Hart-Davis, February 2007.

Update March 2007: bought a Yoga EM-268 electret condenser stereo mic to try to better capture lower sound levels, ie for higher sensitivity.