Hi Alec, If you just use the 60 second length, no problem never showed. However, the distortion problem only showed up after about 1 minute, by which time the Windows recorder had timed out. That was my main reason for extending the time period to do a comparison with the Panasonic recorder.
You cannot record a file greater than 60 seconds with the windows recorder, as supplied and normally configured, as installed. The process is a little long winded but only has to be done once - well for each length and format of silent file anyway. You could just create say a 10 minute file and then when the recording was finished, you can stop the recording and move the 'end of file' marker by using Edit/Delete after current position before saving the file, thus chopping out the silent remaining part at the end of the file.
I haven't tried loading a blank file into the Panasonic Audio recorder to initialise - good idea! I'll try it tomorrow and let you know what happens.

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Willum

[This message has been edited by Bill Norrie (edited 09-17-2002).]