Digital Audio Recordings for Transcription Chapel Hill NC

Whether you are recording dictation, interviews, conferences, focus groups or meetings, it is important to know how to get the best quality recording, because if you are going to get the material transcribed then the better the quality of the recording, the more accurate the transcription will be.

1. Choose your venue carefully. One of the key issues when transcribing is background noise. If you record your interview in a café or pub, on a train, in a shared office or call centre, or in any other noisy environment, the quality of the recording will be reduced, so try to set up all interviews in a quiet space such as someone’s home (pet-free and with the television off!) or a private office or meeting room. Open windows and air conditioning can both cause problems for recorders, so on a hot day, check that your recorder will function OK.
2. Choose your recording equipment carefully. Minidisk players make excellent recorders BUT you will need to transfer the recordings to your PC, which can be a slow and frustrating process. Alternatively some transcriptionists will take the disks and convert them to a useable transcription format before transcribing them for you, but expect to pay more for this as it’s a slow and frustrating process for them too! You’re probably better off with a machine designed specifically for recording voice. There are a very wide range to choose from.
3. Consider an external microphone. Many people use standard ‘Dictaphone’ style recorders to record interviews, and results can be satisfactory, particularly with recent improvements in recording technology, but results will be better if you are able to plug an external microphone into your recorder, and place that between you and the interviewee. Some recorders come with separate microphones that can be clipped to your interviewee’s clothing. If you’re not worried too much about picking up your own words (e.g. if you’re using a list of standard questions), this may be ideal. Otherwise a larger microphone that can be placed between you is best....

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Author: Anne Hickley