How to Series: Record a few seconds of audio on your Treo
Published August 16th, 2006 in howto, palm, quicktipsThanks for visiting Palm Discovery
Yes, I’m quite aware that the Treo 650 doesn’t really have a Voice Memo app in it like the LifeDrive, T3, Zire 72 and others, but, wait, it sort of does. Let me explain.
Although there isn’t an application that shows up in the launcher, we all know that the capability to record audio as well as video is there. After all, the Treo 650 is quite capable of recording video with sound. If that capability is there, why isn’t there a separate audio recorder? Well, there is, but it’s very limited and quite well hidden.
There are several ways to record your voice on your Treo 650.
The first way is obviously just using the video capture program and just ignore the video. Just cover up the camera and start recording. Seems a waste to use a video recorder for audio recording, but it works.
The second way is to get a voice memo or recording application installed on the Treo. Such software include mVoice, CallRec, Personal Audio Recorder, or others for a price. A freeware alternative is Infinityball’s SoundRec, which I find works great and the sounds recording is amazing. Or, check out TreoCentral’s forum (you’ll have to do a search yourself) on how to install the Voice Memo application ripped from a LifeDrive. Apparently it works. I have tried it but the sound quality pales in comparison to SoundRec. I will likely be spending a posting on voice memo apps in a future posting and provide more info on these voice recorder memo apps so I won’t discuss them any further.
And a third way (which I will explain now) is to check out the limited voice recording capabilities of the Treo 650, hidden in the Sounds module.
Buried deep in the Sounds preferences settings, you do have access to something like a voice recorder. On my Treo 650, I’m limited to 1 minute.
To access it, go into either the Prefs application or just simply the Sounds application in the Launcher. If you go into the Prefs, you will need to go to the Sounds & Alerts to get to the same screen.
Tap the Tones box or button in the Phone Application. Then, go down and tap on the Manage button at the bottom.
You will see a list of all your ringtones.
Tap on the New button at the bottom and you will see the voice recorder pop up.
To step you through the process, here’s a Flash simulation on how to do so.
Simulation of creating a voice recording on the Treo 650
The simulation will play through to the end unless I’ve inserted a pop up note to explain specific points.
To continue playing the simulation, press the 
or 
button.
To go back to a previous paused segment, click on the 
or 
button.
To pause the simulation at any time, press the 
button. To continue after it’s paused, press the button again.
To scroll forward or backward in the simulation, click anywhere on the left (to go back earlier in the simulation), or right (to go forward in the simulation) on 
the progress bar.
PLEASE NOTE THAT MANY FREE HOST SERVERS MAY HAVE POP UP ADS. PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU DISABLE POP UPS BEFORE CLICKING ON THE FLASH LINKS
Alternative Flash link: Photobucket
Once you’ve created a voice recording, you can use it similar to the voice memo program such that you can set a Calendar or appointment entry and select that particular sound or voice recording to play at your specified appointment time. Unfortunately, in order to do so, you have to set that particular sound file as the default and change it back to your usual alarm sound file once you’ve got the voice memo reminder. So, in that way, you still have somewhat of a voice memo on your Treo. But, as you can see, it can be quite cumbersome to manually set the default alarm to that voice recording. That is, unless you have something like TreoAlarm or other similar third party clock programs that allows you to set individual alarm tones for each appointment or reminder.I have tried to see if I can access the voice recorded memo in Datebk5 and the latest version of Watchmaker but was unable to have it show up. TreoAlarm, on the other hand, was able to pull it up. So, if you have TreoAlarm, you can be able to set your voice recording to play as a reminder at a specific time without setting the default alarm to your voice recording.
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I am a big fan of SoundRec! I have used it now for several months and have found it reliable, stable, and handy! About the only problem that I have had with it, is it records too good with my volumeCare settings! I had to pull both, the recording volume and the playback volume down the first couple of times I used it. I thought I was going to blow a speaker!!! Great app, especially for free. I would love to have an alarm feature built into it though. Like, I will think of something driving down the road, and record it on the Treo. I would love to be able to set an alarm where it would play back to me at a certain time . . . .
Yes, I find that the quality of the voice recording of SoundRec is AMAZING! Like I’ve mentioned, the default Palm recorder either via the video capture or even when I got the Voice Memo app installed is quite horrible. I too, agree that I’d love to have an alarm feature so that it could be a great Voice Memo/reminder app but it looks like the developer may not be able to make further developments since he doesn’t own a Treo anymore (I believe it was broken). It’s a shame because it is one piece of great software.
Would have been great if he continued development of the MovieRec too. Wow. That would have been something.
Thanks for leaving your comments.
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