I read quite a lot and while at home, in my opinion, nothing beats the
NLS player, with its good sound, long-lasting battery, although the
battery life, that begins at 40 hours, slowly degrades to about 16
with prolonged use. The Iphone of course, is also excellent for
listening to BARD books, but with so many other apps on the Iphone and
now with unlimited data, plus texting and the telephone itself, I
prefer to also take the Milestone 312 for the books.
The problem is that we are slowly becoming pack horses, when you take
into consideration that when travelling, I normally take my Iphone,
Milestone, Olympus, ORCAM, laptop and CPap machine.
Everything could be improved of course. The NLS players could solve
the battery-life issue plus add Bluetooth capability; the Milestone
could add Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an antenna for the FM radio, for now it
uses the wire of the headphones as antenna; the ORCAM should be able
to save the text it scans, etc.
Regards,
Humberto
-----Original Message-----
From: Pc-audio
[mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On Behalf Of Hamit Campos
Sent: Thursday, May 4, 2017 7:33 AM
To: PC Audio Discussion List <pc-audio@pc-audio.org>
Subject: Re: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
Cool. Yes I've red that the new 1 has a radio. I'm glad it's so much
better then my 311. So you'd say it's worth it then? Cause I've never
seen 1 and wasn't sure how much of an upgrade it is. As for the NLS
player. I too have 1. It's cool looking. Don't use it as often though.
What with the app being on my phone.
On 5/4/2017 2:03 AM, Humberto Rodriguez wrote:
Hello Hamit:
Yes, I do have the 312 and it is excellent,
except as I said, that it does not have Wi-Fi. I also have a VRS but
one of the first generation. I do not use the Milestone for
recording except for emergencies, I have an Olympus DS-50 for that
and I normally do not record stereo, mostly monoaural voice.
The Milestone 312 has a circular speaker with
a grill in front, rather large for the size of the hardware, that
plays excellent sound, albeit mono; to hear stereo you must use
headphones, but either way the sound is remarkable for such a small
player. It also has FM radio.
I normally use the NLS player to listen to
BARD books at home, but when travelling or otherwise away from home,
use mostly my Milestone, I prefer it due to size and clarity of
sound.
Regards,
Humberto
-----Original Message-----
From: Pc-audio
[mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On Behalf Of Hamit Campos
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2017 9:57 PM
To: PC Audio Discussion List <pc-audio@pc-audio.org>
Subject: Re: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
Ah do you have the 312? Cause I'm sure no one's meantioned the
MileStone cause of the yuck the 311 was. Epic fale that thing was.
This comming from someone who still has 1. I only brought it back
out cause my DM420 died. I only have the LS-14. It's no good for
podcasts as it doesn't hold your place and also if you turn the
sucker off it'll jump out of the folders. Wait why not use your
Strattus you ask? Yeah during the day sometimes I do. But again I'm
not a big fan of Victor Quality. I really wanted to replace my
trusty old PTR2 but BESB the bord of education and services for the
blind of Connecticut doesn't have a deal with IRTI no more
apparently. Oh wells. So what's the new mile stone like? Can you
send me a recording made with it? Especially if you've used stereo
mikes with it? Thanks.
On 5/3/2017 6:06 PM, Humberto Rodriguez wrote:
I am amazed that during this long discussion
nobody has mentioned the Milestone, that Swiss machine with great
speaker sound that also plays NLS books and is much smaller than the
VRS. Perhaps because it does not have Wi-Fi?
Humberto
Humberto Rodriguez
Fort White, Florida
-----Original Message-----
From: Pc-audio
[mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On Behalf Of Gary Schindler
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2017 4:57 PM
To: PC Audio Discussion List <pc-audio@pc-audio.org>
Subject: Re: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
Look on Amazon for the Lonve players. Best buy sells some MP3
players with radios and recorders to in this price range,
but unless you have some vision
to read the menus they won't do you much
good. They have a small speaker and
a headphone jack that also serves as an external mic and auxiliary
input.
The players have repeat and shuffle and one can create folders
too, not as good as the Olympus machines but it can be done if you
have sight. If you don't have sight you pay handsomely for the
ability to have accessibility to
outmoded technology for a small niche market.
If it wasn't for playing talking books I doubt most of us would be
buying the Victor Streams or Bookports at all.
-----Original Message-----
From: Hamit Campos
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2017 11:01 AM
To: PC Audio Discussion List
Subject: Re: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
What's this 40 $ MP3 and WAV recorder?
On 5/3/2017 10:56 AM, Gary Schindler wrote:
Remember that the Victor stream was mostly meant to play talking
books with a few features added for convenience. actually you can
get an
MP3
player recorder for around $40.00 that has
a better sounding speaker in it
and records MP3 and wave files much better,
but the caveat is that you are
paying for accessible menus with the stream.
The Hims may be a better all around unit,
but it costs twice as much money
as the stream.
Humanware was the first to come out with a machine that played
bard books even before NLS. Let's put everything in to context.
-----Original Message----- From: Chris Skarstad
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2017 9:05 AM
To: pc-audio@pc-audio.org
Subject: Re: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
I think that's just the point. If you're a real audiofile who
enjoys high end audio from a device, and you're really picky
about how stuff sounds, the VR stream ain't for you. Despite all
the bad press the player has gotten here, i'll still purchase one
in the next few days and report my findings. I do think
Bluetooth functionality is something that is lacking and needs to
be in a future update. If some of the other specialized players
can have it, so can the stream. But i'm buying it, fully aware
of this and I'm certainly ok with it.
I'll also report on the speed of downloading books via online
services like BARD. I can always download the books manually and
put them on the stream that way. It's good to know there are
multiple ways of getting a particular job like that done.
On 5/3/2017 8:58 AM, Hamit Campos wrote:
Ah well The Victors are more player anyways then recorder. The
Plextalk Pocket is the thing ya want if ya want a recorder.
On 5/3/2017 5:14 AM, Dane Trethowan wrote:
Ah okay so that problem still exists then? I was given to
understand that later firmware updates had fixed this.
Too late to try that here now <smile>.
On 3 May 2017, at 6:44 pm, Tim Noonan <t...@timnoonan.com.au>
wrote:
Sadly, the Stream Mic or line in creates very audible
artefacts or whistles in recordings. Otherwise the stream
would be a reasonable all-purpose player/recorder.
Regards
Tim
On 3 May 2017, at 6:02 pm, Dane Trethowan
<grtd...@internode.on.net>
wrote:
I didn’t try the line-in recording function though I did
note that - using this function - one can record to PCM Wave
files at 44.1KHZ so surely this should be reasonable.
So if one really wanted to do high
quality recordings one could use the
line-in method and buy suitable equipment to take full advantage.
On 3 May 2017, at 5:43 pm, Jamie Kelly <otrja...@gmail.com>
wrote:
The recording quality is ok for notes and meetings but not of
high broadcast quality as with the bookport plus or Plextor
Pocket range.
Jamie
-----Original Message-----
From: Pc-audio [mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On
Behalf Of Dane Trethowan
Sent: Wednesday, 3 May 2017 4:47 PM
To: PC Audio Discussion List <pc-audio@pc-audio.org>
Subject: Re: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
Yep, convenient may be but the unit
does have its limitations as we’ve
discussed here, the Wi-Fi connectivity
being a very serious limitation
and - given the speed of the Wi-Fi -
one wouldn’t really want to try
and download a good quality audio stream.
And again we come to that bloody awful internal speaker.
Another interesting point and its not critical just an
observation, I wonder why Human ware didn’t include
the ability to be able to browse
NAS storage devices or other computers on a network for files?
Just
about every other device I know of
these days - that can play Internet
radio stations - haas this handy feature which and I reckon
it would be an absolute boom! for users of a VR Stream.
Perhaps I’m talking about a future VR
Stream update though hHumanware
take my advice, don’t make the update too big or it will
take until Christmas for the VR Stream users to download
<smile>.
Regarding my own streaM/ Its found a good home so I’m happy
about that.
On 2 May 2017, at 4:34 am, Peter Scanlon <sca...@tpg.com.au>
wrote:
I love my Victor Stream.
The best thing about it is how easy it is to listen to and
locate internet radio stations.
-----Original Message-----
From: Pc-audio [mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On
Behalf Of Hamit Campos
Sent: Tuesday, 2 May 2017 3:07 AM
To: PC Audio Discussion List <pc-audio@pc-audio.org>
Subject: Re: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
Yeah I've not heard this before either. But perhaps other
people either didn't have the issue or they just axepted it.
On 5/1/2017 12:59 PM, Chris Skarstad wrote:
I'll be purchasing one of these very
soon, so will be able to report
on it when i get it. I have a super-fast connection with
Verizon Fios, so downloading books manually and transfering
them to the player won't be an issue if the
download speeds on the player are as
slow as some of you guys say they are. I'm kind of shocked
that this is just now coming up, as the new
generation stream has been out for
some time now. I thought this would've been mentioned
sooner, but maybe I skipped over it as I wasn't in the
market for one at that time, i'm not sure. I'll certainly
let you guys know my experiences.
On 5/1/2017 12:41 PM, Evan Reese wrote:
As to slow downloading of data, I
have noticed with ours, and those
of some friends, that it doesn't seem to have a great
wi-fi transceiver in it. Even when I'm close to my router,
it usually says that reception is poor.
Other than that, you are right, a lot of functionality in
that little package.
Evan
-----Original Message----- From: Dane Trethowan
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 10:24 AM
To: PC Audio Discussion List
Subject: Victor Reader Stream 2nd Generation
Hi!
I just bought one of these units and would like to make
comment on my purchase.
Firstly I think that the unit does a brilliant job for
what it is in most respects.
The sound from the internal speaker is a little muffled
however
-
having already heard a VR Stream - I
was already prepared for this,
a bit of an annoyance one might say so to overcome this I
use a small BUniden hand-held amplified battery speaker
I've had for years, cost me $25 about 7 years ago, pity
the Stream doesn't have Bluetooth but I guess a product
can't have everythint.
Now I don't know whether this is my unit in particular but
I have noticed that the downloading of data seems to be
incredibly slow compared to other devices I have on my
network, I used the "Check for Updates" function and -
according to that - the firmware is up to date, well at
least the data does get downloaded I guess.
There's a hell of a lot of functionality packed into the
VR Stream box and a lot of this - such as the
Internet Radio, podcasts and so
forth - I won't bother using - given I already have better
solutions for that sort of thing - but for those who don't
the VR Stream provides a great entry level to the world of
Internet Radio and Podcasting.
Getting online with the Vision Australia library was a
snap so I downlaoded a couple of books.
Again, I have other Apps and so forth which I prefer to
use myself but the Stream is convenient for reading, no
doubt about that even though I read all my newspapers
these days straight from the web site its good to know I
have a reliable backup.
---
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**********
Those of a positive and enquiring frame
of mind will leave the rest of
the halfwits in this world behind.
**********
Those of a positive and enquiring frame of mind will leave the
rest of the halfwits in this world behind.
Tim Noonan
Consultant Speaker Coach
Phone: +61 419 779 669
Email: t...@timnoonan.com.au
Skype: VoiceReadings
Twitter: twitter.com/TimNoonan
Coaching & Consulting: www.timnoonan.com.au
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Voice Readings: www.voicereadings.com
**********
Those of a positive and enquiring frame of mind will leave the
rest of the halfwits in this world behind.
