The Recording Hours myth

There is a manliness test for digital voice recorders and it is how many hours they can record for. Some claim 139 hours, others 280 hours, still more the Herculean 573 hours. All these recorders have the same 1GB memory. What's the deal?

The answer, according to Graeme Pearson manager for Philips Speech Processing Asia-Pacific is: how painful do you wish to make your listening experience?

‘Listening to a very low bit rate is terrible for human ears. Not all the encoders are equal in terms of efficiency but generally speaking we do not enjoy the experience when the bit rate gets below 14 kbit/sec.’


140 hours should therefore be the absolute maximum recording time a 1GB voice recorder can handle. Any recorder claiming more than this is just being a bit cheeky.