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MP3 music lovers can start ripping CDs with wild abandon using two new handheld players recently introduced by Archos Technology and Olympus America.

The Archos Jukebox Recorder is about the size of a deck of playing cards and weighs only 12.3 ounces. The consumer device can store up to 100 hours of music--or 500 hours of voice recordings--on a 6GB hard drive. It's available now for $349 online at the company Web site and is coming soon to brick-and-mortar retailers.

"This is the first that can do recordings on a real-time, on-the-fly basis from any exterior audio source--stereo, CD player, radio, anywhere music can be playing," says Verlaine Crawford, Archos Technology marketing manager. "It's not just a player but a recorder and a hard drive. Up until now you had to utilize a computer to bring the music into a storage unit. In this case, you don't have to go into a computer."

While a broad selection of portable MP3 players has emerged in the past year, the handheld devices have been limited to playback. Manufacturers recently have focused on increasing storage capacity, choice of media, and now, recording functions.

The Olympus DM-1 MP3 voice recorder/player packs a lot of punch into a 3-ounce package that's hardly bigger than a pocket comb. With a suggested retail price of $349, it comes with a 64MB SmartMedia card that holds up to one hour of recorded music. Olympus dealers are expected to have the product in stock within a few days.

Combining Business, Pleasure

Primary users are expected to be heavy voice-note takers, such as corporate executives, students, journalists, doctors, and lawyers. Users can upgrade to higher capacity cards that store up to 22 hours of digital voice recordings.

"What's kind of been lost is that those professional users like to listen to tunes, too," says Olympus spokeswoman Sally Smith Clemens. "Now, they can use their digital recorder to listen to MP3 tunes on the road and they don't have to carry two devices."

Both units include a built-in microphone for personal recordings, a USB interface for connection to a laptop or desktop computer, plus MusicMatch software to facilitate CD music downloads.

Included with the DM-1 is a specialized dictation software program to facilitate transcription of voice recordings. The Olympus also uses compact DSS (Digital Speech Standard) files, which are 12 to 20 times smaller than standard WAV sound files.

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