Love this blog. Thanks!

I tried to double-click the record button a few times, and while it didn’t start up the recording immediately it did seem to kick in a little faster. However I did buy myself a faster SD card and that seemed to make recording on the card itself start up a bit quicker.

And you’re right, if you record radio anyway and could use a portable digital field recorder the CC Witness isn’t so expensive after all.

And you are certainly right about how you can hear the distortion when you monitor the recording with headphones when its peaking, but it’s a little subtle until it really overmodulates. As far as the battery drain, I never assume those strength indicators to be all that accurate. But I am glad when a device has one so I have a rough idea of how much juice I have left.

As far as the bookmarks, I don’t have that much of a use for those. But I did forward your question to the folks at C Crane. And perhaps they’ll leave a comment here if they have an answer for you.

I just bought a CC Witness, heavily based on your honest review. I’m really impressed with it. If anybody else regularly records the radio, needs a small or mobile unit, and also sometimes needs a field recorder, I would suggest that they consider this unit.

I have some tips for the sluggish record button…

It seems that the printed manual is lagging with the latest firmware. I found that double-clicking on the record button starts the recording immediately (don’t just press it once). In addition, you can’t stop a recording until you’ve recorded at least for 5 second (this is covered in the manual). A single click on the record button works fine for stopping. If you want to record from the AM radio, and have the display-off setting activated (for less RF interference on AM), you have to click the record button once to active the display, and then double-click it to start the recording.

Another double-click button I found was when marking a ‘favorite’ file. The manual says just to click the play-speed button once, but I found that I have to double-click it to mark a favorite.

I’ve also found a hidden feature (or perhaps a bug). You can monitor the line-in signal through the headphones if you are in ‘files’ mode. You can use this to set the level of your line-in device by ear. Just monitor the line-in signal, and bump up the level until it distorts a bit, then back off about 10% or so.

One thing that you didn’t mention in your review is that the battery strength indicator is not very linear. It stays at 3 or 4 bars for most of the life of the battery, and then quickly drops down from 2 to 0 bars. A few times now I’ve though I had enough power to last out the day, but then it went dead. So, if you only have 2 bars left on the battery indicator, think about recharging it soon. This is really a minor nit-pick.

Also, has anybody figured out what to do with the ‘bookmarks’ (up to 4 of them) you can add to a file? I thought that there should be an easy way to jump to a bookmark when you’re playing back an mp3, but I can’t find anything in the manual to tell you how to do that.

I bought a quality in-line audio attenuator from my local computer guy which has now has made my CC Witness the perfect recording companion. If the exact gadget that made it possible wasn’t an obscure mid-90’s product (covered with dust) that I haven’t been able to find online, I’d advise you buy it. However, I don’t think you can. But a little googling reveals that you can still buy an eight dollar headphone volume adapter at Radio Shack that does the exact same thing.And if you want to record airchecks via the "line-in" function of the CC Witness owning something like this will certainly make it easier.

While settings may vary, if you want to make make clean audible recordings with the line-in option (and you’re not a digital audio expert) you may want to experiment with some headphones on first. Tune to a loud local AM station and adjust the in-line volume until there is absolutely no distortion in your ears. Remember that setting. When you’re tuning to some faint or far away signal you may wanna boost the audio. It’s up to you. But remember when it everything becomes loud and clear and clear again  you may want to turn everything back down to the safe "level" you discovered with your headphones on. Sure, it’s a little complex, but in general I’d advise you try to keep the knob or wheel just a notch or two below where you’ve figured out it may distort.

While I think the default recording levels on the CC Witness for microphones and the hard-wired radio receiver generally make sense, if you want to get the full use out of CC Witness it would be helpful for you to buy an in-line volume control adapter to put in between the recorder and whatever audio source interests you.

I also found some shortwave stuff while I was tuning around, but like you I was really enjoying those medium wave broadcasts from distant lands. And if you’re headed over to GlobalTuners, don’t forget that the AM band in Europe and Japan and much of the world uses oddly spaced 9kHz frequencies (check here for a list), while most of the Americas does AM in the more familiar (and easier to navigate) 10kHz intervals.

When I have some time to kill, I’m going to have some more fun with those global receivers. And I’ve come to realize is that this is probably the way I’m going to be able actually hear the Voice of Korea.

http://www.globaltuners.com/