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New (final) beta of Resco Audio Recorder out with BRAND NEW,high q. MP3 & AAC support

Anyone into serious (!) audio and/or automatic phone call recording on Windows Mobile (Pocket PC only – Smartphones are NOT supported, unfortunately) knows Resco Audio Recorder, probably the best recorder application, only - in MP3 recording - matched by VITO AudioNotes (see review HERE).

The developer of this excellent application has been continuously releasing beta versions of his forthcoming version 4. I’ve published several articles on these versions; the last is HERE. The reader is strongly asked to check out these reviews to see how for example the brand new call recording functionality works. In the current review, I only elaborate the changes.

The official “what’s new” is as follows:

New codec pack with high quality MP3 and AAC recording for higher ARM processors

Optimized version for Intel XScale devices

Automatic display off

Bookmarks visible on track bar

Bookmarks with optional text note

Automatic phone call recording works after soft reset

Gain control fixed

Bugs fixed

Yes, as can be seen, the MP3 encoder quality (which has always been the most problematic aspect of Resco Audio Recorder) has been dramatically enhanced and a brand new AAC encoder plug-in has been added, allowing for using even lower encoding bit speeds with approximately the same quality (and, for that matter, somewhat lower CPU usage, meaning better battery life).

This means using this recorder is, from now on, recommended when you want to record into MP3 - unlike with previous versions.

Installing, configuring

As opposed to the previous betas (and, of course, the old, 3.x series), you will need to download and install two files: Audio Recorder itself, and an additional codec pack. It’s the latter that has the two brand new, high-quality codecs. Both are availbale on the beta page of the 4.x series.

Note that you should ONLY install the new codec pack on XScale or TI OMAP CPU’s. It CANNOT be installed on (old; in general, pre-2003) StrongARM devices. Furthermore, it’s fully incompatible with the Samsung CPU. This means Samsung-based Pocket PC’s (for example, the HTC Trinity / P3600, the HTC TyTN / Hermes etc) won’t work at all and it’s absolutely useless to try to install the codec pack on them. They CAN be installed: the installer only stops the install process when it notices the current Pocket PC only having a StrongARM CPU. However, there are no install-time (or, for that matter, runtime) warnings upon trying to install codecpack on Samsung CPU’s. You will only see something has gone absolutely wrong when you try to switch to using the two new codecs (the old ones work without problems): then, the application will quit at once. This also means you won’t be able to restart it at all. You will need to completely uninstall the entire suite (not just the codec pack: uninstalling it will also result in the other codecs becoming totally inaccessible).

Note that you can install the two files in any order.

After the installation, select either the new AACv4I or MP3v4I encoders in the encoder drop-down list:

Note that, as far as MP3’s are concerned, it’s MP3v4I that is the new; “MP3” is still the old (and in no way recommended – not even on incompatible – StrongARM / Samsung-based – models) encoder.

Problems

Upon AAC playback, depending on the CPU speed, it starts to stutter after a while (almost instantaneously on 195 MHz TI OMAP's, in about 1.5 minutes on 520 MHz XScale and after about 4.5 minutes on 624 MHz XScale devices). This needs to be fixed as the CPU usage is linearly increasing during this time - must be a simple program bug. The developer has promised to look into the problem.

Recording stops after five minutes, unlike with previous beta versions, which allowed for unlimited recordings (and, it seems, don’t have timebombs either).

Benchmarks

As usual, I’ve made SEVERAL benchmarks and tests to see the CPU usage with the two new codecs to see their battery friendlyness, incompatibilities, usability on non-overclocked TI OMAP Pocket PC’s etc.

As can be seen, the new MP3 encoder is only a tad – about 4% - more CPU intensive than the old one. In addition, the AAC encoder takes about 14% less CPU time than the MP3 encoder and is, therefore, probably the best choice for long-time, quality recording where battery life is of extreme importance.

All in all, excellent results - kudos to Resco!

The future – Smartphone

The developer also promises an MS Smartphone version. Until then, your best choice is VITO AudioNotes (see review HERE) for quality MP3 / call recording.

Verdict

The most problematic part of Resco Audio Recorder is now fixed, making the application THE most recommended generic recorder application for the Pocket PC (unless you need the special call recording features – for example, the auto speakerphone mode – of VITO AudioNotes). Kudos to Resco!