PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT
Can I transfer a recording from an old digital voice recorder?
Q I have an old Olympus VN-1000PC digital voice recorder that I used to use for work. I’ve never needed to transfer a recording to a PC digitally until recently – but I’m completely stumped on how to do this. I’ve looked online to no avail. There’s a small covered port on the left side of the recorder, labelled ‘PCI/F’. Can you shed any light on how to do this, and have you any idea what type of lead I would require? Would I need to have drivers installed on on my PC to complete the transfer? I asked around online and was recommended a cable, but this didn’t work. I understand that this is old tech, but I’m hoping there is a way of doing this.
Harry Drummond
A We’ve changed your name at your request. We must also qualify our answer by saying that this device is two decades old and we’ve never seen or used it, so we’ve had to employ some guesswork. But we think we can help you.
First, while you didn’t tell us what cable you bought from Amazon, we wonder if it was a 3.5mm audio cable that you plugged into the headphone socket. This would would enable the transfer of analogue recordings, via the PC’s microphone or line-in socket, to the Windows Voice Recorder app or similar, as the audio is played back. However, your VN-1000PC’s output is likely to be mono. A stereo cable or four-pole (TRRS) cable might not work in your old device’s socket, so this might have tripped you up. A mono analogue cable will have only one ring, as
