REVIEW: Audio Memory System 1.0 – your Pocket PC-based Audio Diary

http://www.personalmemorysystems.com/products/ams/ams.htm

Personal Memory Systems have released a new application (available here, along with demo; price $24.95) for (continuously) recording audio some three weeks ago. I’ve run some serious tests on it and compared to the alternates; the review & comparison can be found below. Here’s the blurb: “Can you always remember important meeting notes, precious time with loved ones, valuable advice without needing a pencil, information from important conversations, names, and faces? With Audio Memory System you can now remember what everybody with whom you come in contact says. We have designed this voice recording software to be always easy to use, since we know that's the only way you'll continue to use it for the rest of your life. Record 24 hours a day/7 days a week, on a schedule basis, or launch with "instant on" recording only when you need it. Tailor your Audio Memory System to meet your needs.” OK, now, let’s see how it really fares against the competition (please refer to the article Everything you may need to know about sound recording on the Pocket PC for more information on the recording formats and other things I refer to). Note that this is not a full review (showing and explaining every possible dialog) but, as with most of my reviews, a comparative one (so that you can compare the product to the alternative ones). Pros

1. can run in the background, as a background task, unlike the built-in Notes (and like all the other voice recorder apps)
2. auto-created filenames also contain the filedate and even the additional notes. As far as the latter is concerned, you just enter your comment on the PDA as in this screenshot and it will be added after the date/timestamp, right to the filename. With the above example, the filename has become 06.06.21_20;08;25-note-Menneisyys'_Example_Note.wav. This makes it really easy to annotate files - no other Pocket PC-based sound recorder application is capable of this.
3. automatized converting to WMA files with WME – the user doesn’t need to do this him/herself.
4. built-in note adding capabilities; notes are added straight to filenames, which is the most portable solution
5. really easy to use
6. encryption on the desktop
7. encryption seems to be pretty strong (not a simple, say, XOR encryption – this means you can’t get the encryption key by, say, just analyzing the encrypted contents of the file area between 0x2a8 and 0x117f, where it’s filled by zeros by default) after some seconds of evaluating its crackability
8. no additional CPU usage; it only consumes what the underlying PCM encoder consumes. For example, on the hx4700, it’s between 3-7%, which is about the same as with Notes recording in 8 kHz, 8 bit, mono. This shows there’re no bugs in the app.
9. when uploading files to the desktop, it automatically creates subdirectories for the years/months (for example, \Program Files\Personal Memory Systems\Memory Manager\My Memories\2006\06(Jun)\ for 06/06) and automatically copies all files belonging to them in there

Cons

1. Quality hardwired to 8 kHz/8 bits (as can also be seen in this screenshot (also see this for an explanation of the header content)), which is definitely not the best solution when compared to alternate sound recorders. The recording quality can’t be modified; as the documentation of the program also points out, the system-wide settings won’t have any influence on the format used.
2. Two-step compression results in far worse sound quality than recording right into a highly compressed sound format (MP3, Ogg or Speex) – mostly because of the low-quality PCM it natively uses
3. No PDA installer; you need to manually create a shortcut to the Pocket PC executable. This isn’t the most beginner-friendly solution – the sheer size of the “Adding the AMSRecord icon to your Start Menu” and the “Assigning a hard button on your Device” sections can chase away beginners
4. No built-in screen-off support – the manual recommends just (auto-)dimming the screen backlight
5. Doesn’t override the auto-poweroff timing of the PDA, unlike many (!) other alternate sound/voice recorders
6. No niceties like Voice Activation System
7. The documentation contains a LOT of really misleading mistakes
8. To listen to encrypted files, you need to have access to the desktop application; however, you can (individually, one-at-a-time, decrypt your files if you're afraid of not having access to a capable, compatible PC after some 40-50 years. Unfortunately, there are no mass-decryption features.)
9. Pretty expensive if you take into account that it’s really nothing more than a layer above the built-in PCM encoder in Windows Mobile and a (simple) desktop application just giving calls to Windows Media Encoder (and encrypting/decrypting files). This is especially visible when the price is compared to that of Resco Audio Recorder, the, in my opinion, by far the best long-time recorder alternative on the Pocket PC.

Minor bugs easy to avoid The desktop converter won’t find the memory card, even if it was given the correct path, in this case, e:\. Setting it to another value and, then, resetting to e:\ fixes the problem as can be seen in here. This is common with all desktop-based operations accessing the card: initial initialization (“Configure your Audio Memory System”) and uploading to the desktop (“Upload and Convert Memories”). Speaking of the latter (“Upload and Convert Memories”), I should point out that the documentation PDF file contains several misleading mistakes. For example, it states that Windows Media Player 9 must be installed for the conversion to work, not Encoder. This (among other, smaller things) will definitely cause problems for novice users. Fortunately, in the Start menu, it’s already referred to as Encoder (and the installation goes flawlessly). The conversion is done OK, as can also be seen in here. Some additional screenshots The main dialog on the desktop; this is the dialog of the configuration utility where you can set the record duration and the recording scheduling. Verdict This application is definitely promising. I recommend it, especially for novice users that don’t want to manually mess with files recorded by alternate sound recorders. The authors, however, should consider adding other recording modes (sampling with the much more noise-free 16 bit and using higher sampling frequencies than 8 kHz), adding “keep alive” and screen off features and a decent, beginner-friendly (so that no one ends up having to create links to the executable by hand) Pocket PC installer. Power, advanced users striving for the best possible voice recording sound quality and the above-listed features (power off, screen off etc.), on the other hand, should continue using either NoteM, Resco Audio Recorder or Vito SoundExplorer for recordings that are of much better quality – at a not much bigger size. Compatibility report I've tested it in the following devices: Pocket PC 2002 iPAQ 3660: doesn't work (the application is incompatible with Pocket PC 2002!) WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720: didn't work; it complained about not being able to access memory card info (I've used exactly the same two cards as in other, CF/SD-capable devices) WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210, WM5 HP iPAQ hx4700, WM5 HTC Wizard (latest i-mate AKU2 ROM), WM5 Dell Axim x51v: works great All in all: give it a try before paying for it. Recommended article Everything you may need to know about sound recording on the Pocket PC