Sony is a pioneer of portable digital products, and consumer audio products have always been one of Sony's traditional strengths. In the field of voice recorders, Sony's market share is as high as 47%, and in the professional voice recorder market, Sony is even more prominent, its classic model UX560 was selected by the well-known digital media The Wirecutter as the best voice recorder to buy.
 
As long as Sony's voice recorder is mentioned, some veteran audio equipment enthusiasts will definitely think of a generation of artifact - Sony PCM-D50. It stands to reason that the most important function of a voice recorder is to record, but because the audio playback effect of D50 is too strong, it is very good in terms of resolution, sound density, sound field, etc., and the quality far exceeds most MP3 on the market at that time, so it is often used by music enthusiasts as a playback front-end.
 
This is thanks to Sony's large number of technology accumulation during the Walkman period, the powerful playback circuit design is the biggest reason for the success of the D50, Sony also used this design in many later voice recorders, plus the unique LPEC and DSD recording mode, to ensure the ability to record lossless sound quality for a long time, it can be said that Sony's voice recorder is the first choice for business people and audio-visual enthusiasts.
 
For ordinary consumers, the recording function of today's mobile phone and professional recording software have long been very powerful, which can completely replace many entry-level voice recorders, and the living space of the low-price market is getting smaller and smaller, some traditional voice recorder brands such as: Tsinghua Tongfang, Samsung, Lenovo, etc. have slowly faded out of the voice recorder market, and the industry has begun to move towards the direction of professional voice recorders, in addition to continuing to improve the recording effect, artificial intelligence and mobile phone interconnection are the focus of future development.
 
Although Sony's voice recorder has not made great progress in terms of intelligence, it has always been in the leading position in the industry in terms of recording quality. Sony has launched hundreds of portable recording devices so far, and the product line is very rich, from professional to home grade products, which maintains a high level of recording effect, which is difficult for other manufacturers to achieve.
 
Sony's voice recorder product line can be broadly divided into two categories: PCM and ICD. PCM is derived from the PCM encoding format, which stands for high fidelity level, and it is a guarantee of a high level of recording quality for professional occasions. ICD is the abbreviation of Digital Voice Recorder, which is suitable for everyday use.
 
Consumers familiar with audio equipment know that the Hi-Res small gold label used to represent high quality, a standard proposed and advocated by Sony, and although Hi-Res certification has long been ubiquitous on headphones and players, and the standard seems to be somewhat outdated today, it is rare to find voice recorders that do not require high playback quality. Under Sony's Hi-Res audio strategy, the first product with the Hi-Res small gold standard is the PCM-D100. This is also the most important feature of Sony's professional linear voice recorder: in addition to being a high-quality recording product, it is also a high-resolution audio playback device.
 
The PCM-D series is the flagship series of Sony's voice recorders, and both the D1 and D50 are considered artifacts by music enthusiasts. As the successor to the D series, the D100 has specially added Sony Walkman sound effects and Chinese menus while maintaining high-quality playback effects, which is more suitable for use as a playback front-end.
 
In terms of the recording function of the "home", the PCM-D100 also performs extremely well. It is positioned as a professional-grade voice recorder, and its biggest selling point is the DSD format, which is a higher specification format than the common PCM. In terms of hearing, common LPCM recordings have obvious loss of detail, while DSD recordings do not have the multi-bit bit rate problem of PCM, and its sound quality is more three-dimensional and full. In addition, under the same LPCM recording, the D100's sampling rate reached 192khz/24bit, the higher the sampling rate, the closer it is to the real sound, while Zoom's classic model H6, although it has reached the quasi-studio standard, the sampling rate is only half of it.
 
In terms of hardware, the D100 uses a 15mm large-diameter microphone specially developed by Sony, which is one of the products with the highest built-in microphone configuration among voice recorder products. It does not support XLR interface, which is the biggest regret of this voice recorder. If you want to use this product for commercial use, in addition to matching it with an external XLR adapter, you can only choose a microphone with a battery, and the range of options is much smaller. The quasi-professional of PCM-D100 is also limited to music scenes, close-up interviews and other scenarios, and higher commercial scenarios such as film and television recording are not capable.
 
Also a professional voice recorder is the ICD-SX series, which is more for everyday use, but also has the iconic Hi-Res gold label, which also proves that Sony is confident in the performance of the SX series.
 
This series retains the simple button design of the ICD, and looks similar to Sony's portable audio players. The addition of an adjustable microphone design takes this product to the next level of professionalism. As Sony's first voice recorder to include a mobile phone remote control, the ICD-SX200 can record audio through remote control. After adding this function, the voice recorder can be left at the sound source, which is not only easy to operate, but also improves the clarity of the recording, and the price is 2099 yuan.
 
The PX is Sony's entry-level voice recorder series, and although it is also an entry-level product, it is different from Zoom and Tascam for professional recording, and Sony's entry-level series is aimed at everyday use. Despite the high price of the PX series, The Wirecutter still rated the Sony ICD-PX470 as the most cost-effective choice in a quiet environment, priced at 599 yuan.
 
If you're looking for a compact recording product, the TX series is a great choice, and it's all about its portability. ICD-TX800 is a voice recorder with a separate design, which consists of a remote control and a voice recorder. This product has good concealment, the volume is only the size of the palm, it can be fixed on a backpack or clothing, and it especially provides pocket mode recording, which can effectively reduce the impact of external friction, and the price is 1599 yuan.