I do recording of my demos all the time for my Creative Suite Podcast. Worse case scenario is that if something goes wrong with the recording or audio, I'll have to re-record it. However, when I'm doing a live demo in front of an audience there is no second chance. It has happened more than once that something has gone wrong in the screen recording software and I lose part of the audio. I decided that I wanted to have a backup "audio" recording of my live presentations. While you can find several great hardware voice recorders out there I didn't want to have to carry around yet another device. The iPhone has a voice recording App built-in, but the iPad doesn't. I went in search of a voice recording App and found Voice Memos for iPad. It met my first requirement in that the recordings are only limited by your available storage space. This means that I can record for a couple of hours easily without a limit problem. The second requirement is that it has to keep recording when the App is in the background as I use my iPad for demos too. Lastly a great UI (user interface) is a must. Simple, big buttons to stop, start, pause the recording as well as a meter to let me know what the audio levels are. Voice Memos for iPad has all of this!
How well does it work?
I got a chance to try out this App at a workshop I was teaching last weekend. I wanted to have an audio recording of my 2 hour presentation as well as a co-presenter. It recorded the whole thing with zero problems. The iPad was lying flat on the table the whole time. As a matter of fact I was really impressed by the audio quality too since I was not directly in front of the iPad at all times. Seems like the iPad 2 has a better mic than it does speaker. After I got back to my room I wanted to transfer the recordings to my computer. This was when I realized that this App has a limit. For the $0.99 asking price you can record all you want and listen all you want on your iPad. However, if you want to transfer those recordings to your computer or to others via email you'll have to pony up for the additional $0.99 In App Purchase. I didn't have much of a choice at this point. So I paid the extra $0.99. With the In App Purchase you get the ability to transfer recordings to your computer via iTunes as well as the ability to email them out. You also get a trimming feature. While I don't have a problem paying $2 for a good App I kinda felt like had I known this up front I might have chosen one of several other Apps out there that do the same thing. Perhaps the In App Purchase should offer trimming and transfer of unlimited sized recordings. I think for the initial price of $0.99 you should have some ability to transfer the recording out of the App, even if it's limited to just email and a certain size. Nonetheless, I'm here now and $2 later I really like this App. It worked flawlessly for me. While you can't title your recordings in the App, you can assign labels to them such as "Lecture", "Podcast", "Interview", "Meeting", "Idea", etc.
The only operational ding I'll give it is that when I trimmed an audio clip it was a destructive trim. In other words it did it to the original clip without offering to make a copy first. That's a no no in my book! Luckily if you "Export" the audio file first, which puts it in the area of the App to be transferred then the trimmed version will be there too for export. Otherwise you're hosed.
I'd also like to see the ability give the audio files custom names. Labels are nice but I can't think of a single reason why you shouldn't be able to name the recordings whatever you want.
The recordings transfer over as .M4A files. You can check out a sample recording here to hear the quality.
You can get Voice Memos for iPad for $0.99 here from the 
Terry’s review is right on… right down to the crap feature to not allow exporting unless you pony up the additional $0.99.
We purchased 30 copies of this app for an iPad cart at our school and quickly abandoned it because we really can’t do in-app purchasing with cart iPads. We would have gladly paid the $1.98 up front, but ended up buying another program that gave us the same capabilities and allowed us to export without the in-app surprise.
Can this be used on first generation ipad using headset w/ mic?
OMG! It cost ninety-nine cents more. Those bastards!!!
Can you imagine if Adobe did that for additional things to to Photoshop. Who’d pay all that extra money. Oh wait. Photoshop costs sixty nine thousand nine hundred cents and extended is only an additional thirty thousand cents. Shipping is an additional five hundred and ninety nine cents but we should take that off the table since we’re talking about downloads. Apple gets thirty percent right. So the developer gets an additional sixty six cents for the add on.
I do agree that they could have just charged one hundred and ninety eight cents in the first place to get the ability to move the file but it is unfortunate that this race to the bottom has ended with developers agonizing over whether to charge $.99 or $1.98 for something that has no space limitations other than ram and runs in the background with a great UI.
Sorry I’m a little snarky today trying to justify my CS3 to CS5 upgrade.