A quick test of Yoho Voice Recorder Version 2.03

This is a new installment in my Pocket PC Sound Recorder review series. To find out about my previous articles, you may want to read my first article on Resco Audio Recorder, VITO SoundExplorer and NoteM (the three most important advanced sound recorders for the Pocket PC). It is linked from the PPCMag articlehttp://www.smartphonemag.com/newsl_jkwg/JKWG_02-22-05.htm and has also been directly linked by Pocket PC Thoughts (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,37799 ). Also check out my quick test of Vianix Pocket Talk Enterprise Pro at, say, http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118288.

Program name: Yoho Voice Recorder Version 2.03
URL :http://www.poccosoftware.com/yoho.html
Price : $15.49

Can be entirely installed into memory card (memory consumption: 280k)

This application is a far cry from any decent sound recorder program. Actually, it’s only better than the built-in Notes application, sound recording-wise, in the following respects:

- it can run in the background (recording stops in Notes when you start another application or even when the operating system displays a system dialog box – for example, about low-level battery)
- It has VAS and some kind of “compression”, which works pretty similar to VAS.

However, it has the following problems:
- first and foremost, it only uses the built-in operating system coders: the PCM and the GSM. No MP3, no Speex, not even ADPCM.
- its CPU usage is considerably higher than that of Notes. Using the GSM voice coder, for example, Notes has a CPU utilization between 2 and 7% CPU, while Yoho, with the “compression” switched off, between 20 and 36%, and, with the “compression” switched on, some 3-5% more. (Fortunately, switchin on the VAS doesn’t introduce any additional CPU load.) While there is no recording, VAS itself has about 25% CPU utilization.
- its price: $15.49 is far too much for an app like this if you consider the price (US$ 19.95) of Resco Audio Recorder.

Bottom line:

There is absolutely no point in choosing this app over the two other alternatives.

NoteM offers MP3 recording for free (even if it’s without VAS) and Resco Audio Recorder, which is only 5 US$ more expensive, a lot of other goodies, for example, Speex.

Please note that the big brother of this application, ProTone Voice Recorder (seehttp://www.poccosoftware.com/protone.html ) is also suffering from the same problems. It does have some additional capabilities (editing), but there’re still no additional coders, only the ones already available in the Pocket PC 2002/Windows Mobile 2003+ operating system. This is why I haven’t written a separate review of it. I don’t recommend it at all: depending on your needs, NoteM or Resco Audio Recorder may be a much better choice. Or, if you absolutely need a PDA-based sound editor, go for the VITO SoundEditor (http://vitotechnology.com/en/products/soundeditor.html ). (The latter doesn’t work with GSM-encoded files though.)