Olympus DM-550 digital voice and music recorder wins iF design award 2010

Olympus is delighted to announce that its DM-550 digital voice recorder has been awarded a prestigious industry prize: an iF product design award 2010. With all the features of a high-end recorder and the multimedia capability of a next-generation MP3 player, the DM-550 gives business professionals a stylish and versatile device for work and leisure.

Since its launch, the sleek DM-550 has won over users with linear PCM recording quality, Voice Guidance, superb battery life and its user-friendly file management solution. For hard-working people who like to make the most of their downtime, it also stores up to 4GB of music, audio books and podcasts – in excellent quality. The iF product design awards jury selected this innovative Olympus device in the category Audio / Video, out of a total 2,486 entries from 39 different countries.

Outstanding design
The jury assessed the DM-550 according to criteria that included design quality, workmanship, choice of materials, degree of innovation, environmental friendliness, functionality and ergonomics. Durable and light with a classic black and aluminium design, the DM-550 cuts an elegant figure at meetings. Its black protective cover integrates a fold-out support that can be used to stand the recorder up on a table so the razor-sharp display is easy to read and control from across the room. Tactile buttons, the backlit LCD and multilingual menus make for intuitive operation. Together with Voice Guidance, they ensure even visually impaired or dyslexic users can capture meetings, memos or speeches with ease.

State-of-the-art recording
Thanks to its linear PCM capability, two noise-cancelling microphones and a choice of recording formats for different conditions, the DM-550 delivers consistent CD-quality audio with no loss of crucial detail. Three different microphone sensitivity settings are available for recording different sources. The LCD makes it easy to monitor recording levels and Euphony sound enhancement technology guarantees incomparable clarity and realism – for professional recording and playback when it really counts.

Flexible file management
For business people on the go, up to 51 hours of battery life and 4GB of internal memory provide the power and space for hundreds of files. What’s more, the DM-550’s memory can be extended using the microSD / micro SDHC slot. It’s simple to save, organise and edit audio files, too, thanks to Olympus’ bundled Sonority audio management software solution. While PCM files can be edited directly on the DM-550 without using Sonority, other file format can be saved to multiple folders, split, marked, indexed, partially deleted and browsed by intro on a computer – with separate folders for audio, music and podcasts. Sonority supports web-based services such as RSS and podcast subscription as well as automatic updates and upgrades, on a PC or Mac.

For a full list of DM-550 features, please go to www.olympus.co.uk