Okay, everyone got that?

Here's a little film clip we've made for the Digital Voice Tracer.
These are really inexpensive digital voice recorders that you can record lectures and meetings on.
The message? If it's important, record it.

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.

What is the difference between the $100 one and the $600 one (Part 2)?

...And because I completely failed to answer my own question, here is part 2. I have given you a guide to what a digital 'notetaker' is - an affordable, fairly rudimentary type of recorder that records in MP3 and is not suitable for transcription.

'Pro Dictation' is something else altogether. Many people realise this after they have bought a $100 note-taker. The typical user of this device is the managing partner of a law firm. Ensconced in leather and mahogany, he or she is rather adept at dictating edicts, letters, directives. Their time is very expensive, so it makes sense for someone else to do the typing.

This person’s device of choice will be something like the Philips Digital Pocket Memo 9500. Philips along with Olympus and Grundig together created the DSS file format (along with Grundig, a German manufacturer) that has become the industry-standard.

The five main rules of a pro dictation:
1. For the greatest ease-of-use (and this is what pro dictation is all about, isn’t it?), buy a recorder with a slide-control (see the Digital Pocket Memo 9500 below).
These recorders are around $150-$200 cheaper but the trade-off is an interface that is perhaps less intuitive.

2. The recorder will come with software. This software is similar in layout to Microsoft Outlook (folders on the left, inbox to the right, menus and settings long the top- show print screen). This software enables the author to manage his or her dictation files and send the completed dictations to the typist for transcription. You will also need transcription software for the typist; this looks almost exactly the same as the author’s and comes with a headset and foot-control.

3. You talk, they type. This remains the golden rule for pro dictation: the recorders are used by professionals with support staff at their disposal. Speech recognition has developed a foothold in the pro dictation market and the Philips SpeechExec software is compatible with Dragon Naturally Speaking, the biggest player in the field. Downloaded dictations can be converted to text with a click of the icon below.

Pocket Memo 488 (tape) Digital Pocket Memo 9500

Speech-to-Text option in Philips SpeechExec
4. Digital recorders are like tape recorders: ergonomically they are very similar as both use a slide control. Tape is understandably chunkier and a little low-tech compared to digital.

Unlike a note-taker, the controls for play/stop/rewind/fast-forward are on the side, meaning the ‘author’ only has to use his or her thumb to control most functions. Some more affordable recorders use buttons instead, such as the Digital Pocket Memo 9370 (below).

5. Pro recorders use DSS (except Sony).

As mentioned earlier, the DSS file format has become the default standard for pro dictation. DSS files are much smaller than mp3 (DSS is 5-6MB/hr vs. 28MB for high quality MP3) as the format is only useful for recording voice. It’s fairly useless for recording a band practice, or bird song or the slow rhythmic tumbling of waves in the Coromandel.
And whereas MP3 (the file format of Philips digital notetakers) can be played back using any media player, DSS files can only be opened with the dedicated dictation software.

What is the difference between the $100 one and the $600 one (Part 1)?

Something to note when you read any of these entries: I am working in New Zealand dollars which, to save my American readers having to use a currency converter, is worth more than a Mexican Peso but less than anything you have ever wanted to buy.
A $100 digital recorder that you might find in Noel Leeming or PB Tech is probably best described as a digital 'notetaker' (see image of the Philips Digital Voice Tracer to the right). The difference between this and an expensive professional recorder is not necessarily to do with the quality of the recording but a) what you want to do with the recording and b) how easy the recorder is to use day-to-day. Let’s look at a) in more detail first:

See how it looks quite similar to an MP3 player – all the buttons on the front, plastic shell, small and light (probably 10cm high and 40-80 grams).

These are the main rules for the $100-$300 digital notetaker you've bought:
1. It will record in MP3 or WMA (unless you’re Sony)
2. It should come with a USB connection (and make sure it does! This is the difference between the $99 and $150+ note-taker)
3. It should be a ‘mass storage device’, just like a memory stick. This is hugely important because if your notetaker records in some obscure format that can only be unlocked by proprietary software you’re in a bit of trouble if you want someone on another computer to listen to a recording
4. It will have built-in flash memory (I don’t know of one note-taker on the market that has removable memory)
5. You won’t be able to edit your dictation (once you stop recording you have to start a new track to make further dictations) and most importantly:
6. It will not be much good if you want your dictations typed up or ‘transcribed’ afterward. Instead you will play the recordings back on the notetaker, or a media player like iTunes or Windows Media Player (I encourage you to buy a recorder with a USB connection, that way you download and save the files on the computer, and email them)