Some may be interested in this discussion from the qual-research list about
recording equipment for interviews.
Jane Sandall
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Stockdale" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 6:26 PM
Subject: Re: Digital recorders


> Here's my two cents on digital recording.
>
> I think it depends on what you mean by a digital recorder. There are many
> different types of digital recorder or ways to make a digital recording.
In
> no particular order:
>
> 1. Use a PC, laptop, or subnotebook with an external mic and recording
> software such as CoolEdit 2000 or Sound Forge Studio XP.
> 2. PocketPC, if you can find one with a mic-in jack as the internal mic is
> useless for qualitative research. As far as I know there are none
available
> with a mic-in jack at the moment. You can buy a modified iPAQs but that's
> an expensive option.
> 3. Harddisc based portable recorder (e.g. Archos Jukebox, Creative Labs
> Jukebox, Terapin Mine).
> 4. Voice memo recorder (Olympus, Sony, and Panasonic).
> 5. Minidisc recorder (Sony, Sharp).
> 6. Professional solid state recorder (Marantz, Denon, Mayah, Maycom,
> Nagra).
> 7. DAT recorder (Sony, etc.).
>
> Note that a good quality, external microphone is a prerequisite for good
> audio regardless of the type of recorder. And recording technique.
>
> All of these various digital recrding options have their pros and cons.
>
> I suspect when you say "digital voice recorder" you may mean a voice memo
> recorder (e.g Olympus DS 2000, Sony ICD-MS1). I haven't used a voice memo
> recorder but I suspect they don't work very well for interviews, focus
> groups, etc. The audio is highly compressed and they sample over a very
> narrow frequency range, similar to what you get over a telephone line. A
> narrowing of the frequency sampling range and compression aren't
> necessarily bad, in fact may be an advantage, but these recorders strike
me
> taking this reduction to an extreme in order to provide long record times.
> I expect they work quite well for taking memos when the recorder is held
by
> a speaker up close to their mouth --the use for which they were designed.
> That said, I'd be interested in hearing the experience of anyone who has
> actually used one of these devices to record research interviews.
>
> At the moment minidisc is probably the most portable, reliable, and
> affordable way to make digital recordings that will provide high quality
> audio. They need to be used with some care (make sure the TOC is
written!).
> The latest Sharp models can be had as cheap as $100 (e.g. SR90), provide
> for long record times, and the discs can be had for not much more than a
> $1. Minidisc will give you very high quality audio when used with a good
> quality external microphone (probably another $50+). To find out more
about
> minidisc go to the Minidisc Portal at http://www.minidisc.org/.
>
> The main problem with minidisc is that you then have to get the recordings
> in some form that can be easily transcribed. It would be nice if you could
> readily transfer minidisc files to PC but you can't (Sony crippled the
> technology for various reasons). At the moment I rerecord minidisc
> recordings to my PC, i.e. playback through a sound card and record using
> CoolEdit 2000 and then save to MP3 format. My transcriptionist then uses
> Transcriber, a free audio transcription program, to transcribe the audio.
> This works very well. The difference between audio made with a standard
> cassette recorder and minidisc is like night and day. The first time my
> transcriptionist got a minidisc recording she said she felt like she was
> going a third faster.
>
> All this said, minidisc probably isn't the future. I think solid
> state/flash memory recorders are the way to go in the long term as they
are
> more reliable and interface well with computers (this is where
professional
> radio broadcast recording is heading or has already headed). At the moment
> if you want to use a solid state recorder you have to choose between a
> voice memo recorder or a professional solid state recorder. As I already
> noted, I'm doubtful of the appropriateness of voice memo recorders for
> qualitative research purposes. On the other hand, professional recorders
> like those made by Denon and Marantz seem like overkill for this purpose
> and they are expensive. I think this will change e.g. check out Dialog4's
> Sountainer (http://www.dialog4.com/sountainer/feat_stn2.html), a
> sophisticated portable recording device designed for field interviewing. I
> think we will also see PocketPCs with mic-in jacks or add-ons that will
> allow them to be used as high quality recording devices that can record to
> either flash memory or IBM/Toshiba type microdrives on a PC Card (see
> http://www.pocketrekorder.com/ for a rather expensive modification of a
> standard iPAQ).
>
> Aside from potential gains in audio quality there are other advantages to
> digital. Once you have your audio stored as a computer file you can do all
> sorts of things: burn the interviews to CDROM; use editing software like
> CoolEdit to "clean" the audio of identifying information (i.e. silence
> sections); produce audio synchronized transcripts; use audio editing
> software to adjust recording levels and balance, and edit out distracting
> background noise, and so on.
>
> Cheers, Alan.
>
> >
> >=====
> >Has anyone used a digital voice recorder to capture unstructured or
> >semi-structured interviews? The suppliers claim numerous advantages in
> >terms of clarity and versatility but the better models are expensive.
> >I would welcome accounts of experiences using this technology. If you
> >reply to me personally I will post a summary of responses on the list
> >in due course.
> >
> >
> >Professor Peter Halfpenny
> >Centre for Applied Social Research
> >Department of Sociology
> >University of Manchester
> >Manchester     M13 9PL
> >tel. 0161 275 2493  fax: 0161 275 2491
> >email:  <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]
> >WWW:  <http://les1.man.ac.uk/sociology/casr>
> >http://les1.man.ac.uk/sociology/casr
> >--