Customer Rating: 
Summary: It seems to be working...
Comment: My thanks to amazon.com and all who posted about this product. It was largely due to the reviews that I read that I went with the WS-311M when I found it on clearance at Best Buy for $61.99. I just got it yesterday so I'm only writing after my initial experience with it but so far, so good. I haven't looked at the manual yet. I've made 2 recordings with it. It's very intuitive. I like the imaging with the stereo mic. I would be curious to know how much different/better the DS-40 would be for $35 more. The files effortlessly downloaded to my Mac desktop and sound fine for what they are - I don't think I would have had the same luck with the
Sony ICD-* models under $100.
My main reason for purchase is to record song ideas as they come but since I just got it and was feeling a like a kid at Christmas, I thought I would bring it and play with it a little during a church service that I was at today. The recording turned out great for where it was. I put the WS-311M on top of the head of my amp, pointed it back toward myself and pushed record. I wanted to see what it would kind of audio it would capture. I paused it at one point where there was some talking by pressing the record button a second time. I pushed the record button again and the WS-311M continued to record in the same file as opposed to creating a new one.
I was standing at the front of a stage but with my guitar amp turned around and facing the back of the stage, toward the B3/keyboards and percussion player. My amp is mic'd and does not face out toward the audience. It is in front of me, right about where wedge monitor would be. I have an EAW wedge on my left with a lot of my vocals and some drums and piano coming thru for reference. The WS-311M picked up a good amount of electric guitar, both mine and the other guitar player. It captured a lot of ambiance, but in a good way. It sounded pretty cool. Not a lot of bass came through. Between the sound echoing from the Front Of House P.A. (the speakers that the audience hears) and the mix in my own wedge, I could hear a good mix of vocals, drums, piano, percussion and guitars.
The internal speaker on the WS-311M should not be used as a gauge of the sound quality. I listened back to the first set of songs on a pair Westone ES-3 IEM's (ear phones) and the second set of songs out of a low end desktop stereo system that had a sub. The Westone's sounded a lot better but both systems demonstrated that the WS-311M did an adequate job of capturing the ambient sounds of a band stage. The recording level was just at the default setting of the 2nd highest quality format called ST-HQ.
I think the WS-311M will be a good investment and would recommend it. My only complaint is the .wma format. It should be a more universal format like mp3.
