Greetings all, and hope your new year has gotten off to a satisfactory start. I visited Olympus's website and was intrigued by their new DS-50 digital recorder. Among other neat features, this recorder boasts playback of MP3, WMA, and Audible files, as well as speech feedback for navigating its menus. My chief complaint with the DS-2 was that, even with good microphones, the recordings were noisier than those that people are getting out of other recorders with the same microphones. In looking at the specs for the DS-2 and the DS-50, the only notable difference in them are the storage capacity, the external mic impedance (2000 ohms for the DS-2 and 680 ohms for the DS-50), and the maximum frequency they can record (17KHz for the DS-2 and 20KHz for the DS-50). I like the idea of these recorders over those made by Edirol and its competitors because of their size, and I am willing to sacrifice a slight bit of audio recording quality for size if that's necessary. My questions, then, are as follows. 1. What, if any, predictable result comes from the difference between the two recorders' mic impedance? 2. Given that I do all my editing in Studio Recorder and that I have to convert WMA files to wave in order to edit them, is it likely that even if the recording quality of the DS-50 is nearly equivalent to the excellent recordings folks are getting from the Edirols and competitors, I'd find more dissatisfaction with the WMA to wave conversions on the way to Studio Recorder? Thanks in advance for any feedback you can provide. Very gratefully, Jeremiah Z. Rogers Wireless: 704-996-5334 Email/Skype/MSN Messenger: jzr@xxxxxxxxxx On the web: www.jzrogers.com