87. Record Voice Memos  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 46 Find and Play Music on the iPod
 SEE ALSO 90 Listen to Your iPod in the Car
If you're a writer, teacher, student, researcher, or just someone who likes to get quick thoughts recorded for posterity, one gadget you might find indispensable in your daily life is a small and convenient voice recorder. With an iPod in your pocket and an inexpensive add-on accessory , you can have one. 87. Record Voice Memos 
The iPod doesn't have a built-in microphone for recording your voice or any other sound, but its software does have support for third-party microphone accessories that unlock these features. Just connect the add-on device to the top of the iPod and begin recording. "Voice memos" you record in this way are stored in mono WAV format and can be transferred back to your computer to review at your leisure.  NOTE The iPod mini does not support recording voice memos.
| 1. | Get the Griffin iTalk or Belkin Voice Recorder
The two most popular iPod microphones are the Griffin iTalk ($39.95) and the Belkin Voice Recorder ($34.95). Both work similarly, but the iTalk has a rather more seamless process for transferring voice memos back into iTunes. The illustrations for this task show the iTalk.
Visit the online Apple Store (http://store.apple.com) or an Apple retail store to pick up one of these devices.
| | 2. | Connect the Device to the iPod
Plug the microphone into the top of the iPod, making sure that the long round prong goes into the microphone jack and that the small tab goes into the rectangular hole next to it. (The speaker should face the front.)
| | 3. | Record a Voice Memo
When you connect the microphone, the iPod immediately goes into Voice Memo recording mode; the display shows the elapsed time in the recording, and there are two available options: Record or Cancel. Cancel leads back to the iPod's normal menu system; Record begins audio recording. Select the Record option and press the Select button.
Speak into the microphone, hold up the iPod to capture a lecture, or just set it down and let it record. The audio stream is recorded in mono WAV format at an 8KHz, 16-bit sampling rate, which consumes about 1MB per minute; this means if you have 10GB of unused space on your iPod, you can record voice memos for almost 67 hours (2.8 days) continuously before you run out of space. (If the iPod becomes full, you won't be able to record any more voice memos.)
| | 4. | Save the Voice Memo
You can pause the recording and resume it (select Pause , then select Resume ); at any time, you can select Stop and Save to close the recording and save it on the iPod's disk. Press Menu to exit to the iPod's regular menu system.
| | 5. | Play a Recorded Voice Memo
While the iTalk or Voice Recorder is connected to the iPod, an item called Voice Memos is available in the Extras screen. Select this option to see all the voice memos you've recorded so far, labeled by the date and time of each recording. Highlight a voice memo and press Select , then choose Play to play it back through the microphone device's speaker; you can control it during playback as you would any song.
In the same Voice Memos menu, choose Record Now to record a new voice memo.
| | 6. | Delete Voice Memos
To delete a voice memo, select the voice memo in the Voice Memos screen and then choose Delete to erase it from the iPod.
| | 7. | Transfer Voice Memos into iTunes
When you synchronize the iPod with iTunes, the voice memos are automatically downloaded into your iTunes Library and placed into a playlist called Voice Memos ; the recorded memos are automatically deleted from the iPod after they have been synchronized with the Voice Memos playlist as regular songs in the music database. If you enable disk mode (see 80 Use Your iPod as an External Hard Disk ), you can access the voice memos in the Recordings folder at the top level of the iPod's disk.
| NOTE The Belkin Voice Recorder might not synchronize your voice memos automatically into iTunes. If it doesn't, navigate to the iPod's Recordings folder, copy the contents to your computer, and add them into iTunes as described in 11 Add a Music File to Your iTunes Library .
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