Fantastic Recording Tips

• Make Your Recordings as Clear as Possible

• Use an External Microphone

• Ask your Subject to Speak Up

• Don't use Microcassettes

• Use Fastest Recording Speed

• Record in a Quiet Place

• Shut off Voice Activation Features

• Use Brand Name Tapes

• Use Shorter Tapes or Record Only on One Side

• Send us Original Tapes, not Copies

• Use Standard 10:30 am Next Day Delivery

Make your recordings as clear and as noise free as possible for accurate transcription.

Good recordings result in accurate transcripts, so it is essential to make your recordings as clear as possible.

Start by using a good quality, full-size cassette recorder, such as a Marantz PMD, Sony PressMan, Sony Walkman Pro or similar high-end consumer or professional level recorder.

The money you save by reducing your transcription costs with clear, easy-to-hear tapes will probably pay for a good recorder with the very first job.

We recommend using an external or lavalier microphone to make your recordings even better.

The built-in microphone in most portable recorders is literally a 10-cent item with limited volume levels and telephone quality sound.

They also tend to pick up sound from the nearest source of noise - the recorder itself!

You can increase the quality of your recordings by buying a good external microphone or lavalier microphone from Radio Shack, Circuit City, J&R Music World and so forth.

Check with a sales associate to make sure the microphone you buy is compatible with your recorder. Choosing the wrong microphone could lead to low volume or distorted recordings.

Radio Shack and Circuit City also offer adapters that allow you to record telephone conversations. Again, make sure the one you buy works properly with your recorder and records both sides of the conversation.  Don't record telephone calls from the speaker on a speaker phone.

Place the microphone as close to the sound source as possible, or use a lavalier microphone.

All too often, we receive tapes where the interviewer is perfectly clear, but the person being interviewed cannot be heard because the microphone is too far away.

Since the answers are almost always more important than the questions, the recording microphone has to be placed as close as possible to the person being interviewed.

Sound volume is ruled by what's known as an inverse square ratio. As distance is increased, sound volume is decreased by the square of the distance.

An easy way to think of it is for each foot of distance a microphone is away from a sound source, the recorded volume level is decreased by half and the amount of background noise doubles.

Because sound volume degrades so quickly over relatively short distances, especially with inexpensive equipment, we cannot stress enough that for good recordings and accurate transcripts, microphones and recorders must be placed as close to a subject as possible and that the recording be done in a quiet setting.

Don't be afraid to ask your subject to speak up.

All too often we receive low volume tapes where the interview subject is barely speaking above a whisper. When we ask about this, we are told that the subject was a very important person and the interviewer did not want to interrupt.

Do not be afraid to ask the interview subject to speak up, or to say you are a little hard of hearing and cannot hear what is being said. Most people do not know when they are speaking too softly, but they are happy to speak louder to accommodate the interviewer.

An alternative is to sit further away from the subject. Most people will speak louder when someone is sitting further away.

Also be sure to speak up yourself. In a one-to-one situation, the interviewer will match the volume level of the person asking the questions. If you whisper the questions, your will get back whispered responses, which make for difficult transcription.

Always use full-size cassettes instead of microcassettes.

Full-size cassettes always provide three times better sound quality than micro or mini-cassettes (15kHz versus 5kHz), so we advise using a full-size cassette recorder for better quality sound and lower tape hiss. Thanks to miniaturization, they are not much larger than a micro recorder.

We recommend recording at the fastest speed setting on your recorder.

Most micro recorders and some full-size recorders allow you to record at slower speeds to save tape and extend recording time. Don't be tempted to use slower speeds. You will be doubling the amount of noise on the recording and halving the audio quality.

Tapes are cheap (about $1 apiece), and by using the faster speeds and additional tapes you can save yourself time and money.

Use brand name tapes when recording.

Many times when we have problems with excessively noisy tapes or tapes breaking or sticking, the majority of the problems are caused by non-brand name tapes. Use Fuji, Maxell, Sony, TDK and other well-known, brand-name tape manufactured by the company that sells it. (Certron is not a brand name, and Radio Shack does not make its own tape). You will actually save yourself money in the long run by using quality brand-name tape.

Find a quiet place to hold your interview or discussion.

It is very difficult to transcribe tapes recorded in a noisy environment, such as restaurants, bars, exhibit halls, airports, moving vehicles and so forth. Do everything you can to minimize background sound by moving to a quieter area, closing any doors and windows, and shutting off any noise-making devices.

Shut off Voice Activation Features.

Some recorders come with a voice activation feature that will shut off the recording when the sound level goes below a certain threshold. What we have found is that these circuits are not very sensitive and will often shut off in the middle of a sentence, or miss entire sentences, especially with soft-spoken speakers. If your tape has such a feature, you should make sure it is shut off. There is nothing we can do to restore audio that was not recorded.

Have a sound technician help you.

If you are recording a conference or seminar in a hotel or meeting center, ask someone in the facility to connect your recorder to the in-house sound system for a direct feed. Sound technicians are usually available to help you do this.

We often receive tapes of speeches that were recorded from the audience, and even though the sound might have been clear to the person sitting there at the time, what gets recorded often sounds like it was done in an echo chamber, and parts are often impossible to understand.

If it is not possible to get a direct sound feed, an alternative is to place your microphone or recorder as close as possible to the podium or to a sound system speaker. Reporters will often place their recorders right on the podium for the best sound, and you should consider doing this.

The bottom line is that in a live situation, human ears filter out a lot of extraneous noise where microphones tend to pick up sounds that are closest and loudest to them. While you may be hear a speaker clearly from the middle of an audience, a recorder will be hearing people moving around you, conversations happening near you, the echo from the back of the room, the air conditioning kicking on and off, and so on.

If a 100% accurate transcript of your meeting or event is crucial, we suggest you hire a professional sound technician or audio visual company to use multiple microphones and a mixer to produce a broadcast-quality recording.

If you need advice for your recording situation, please feel free to call us at (617) 451-1807. We have audio-visual technicians on our staff who can suggest ways to make your recordings and your transcripts better.

Get your transcripts back faster by using shorter tapes or recording only on one side of a tape.

We can turn around your transcripts faster when you use shorter length tapes or when you record your material on only one side of a tape.

When a project is spread out over multiple tapes, more transcriptionists and proofreaders can work on the job simultaneously and finish it quicker.

For example, if two hours of material is recorded on a single tape, because there is only one tape, only one person at a time can work on it. Since this represents 12 to 14 hours of typing and proofreading (not including breaks and hand-offs), you are looking at someone working two full days to complete a transcript.

But if the same audio is recorded on two tapes, then two people can work on the tapes at the same time and complete the job in six or seven concurrent hours, which is half the time.

By using shorter tapes and recording only one one side, you can get back transcripts faster.

Send us original tapes.

We know from experience that original master tapes simply sound better than copies, and if you want fast, accurate transcripts, we have to have the originals.

We have had several instances where clients have copied tapes on their own, gotten the tapes mixed up and sent us hard-to-hear copies instead of the perfectly clear originals. The result has been some confusion about either the cost or the quality of the transcripts until the original tapes turned up.

Copies always have less quality than the originals, so if you need to keep a copy, make sure you send us the original and not the duplicate.

If you were given multiple copies of the same audio and you do not need to keep a copy, send us all of the sets of tapes and we will determine which is best. We may also be able to use the multiple copies to have several transcriptionists work on the project at the same time. This will ensure you receive the most accurate and highest quality transcript in the fastest time possible.

Do not use First Delivery or Early Delivery Service, or Saturday Delivery Service.

Because we are located in an office building in Downtown Boston, the entrance to our building is locked until 8 am on weekdays. FedEx tries to deliver First Delivery or Early Delivery packages at 7 am in our area. When the delivery men find the building locked and no one available to sign for the package, they do not return until 2:30 pm.

This means that if you use Early Delivery, it will result in "late" delivery for us.

Likewise, there is no delivery to our area on Saturdays. If you try to send something to us marked "Saturday delivery" we will not receive it until 2:30 pm on Monday.

Save time and save money by always using the Standard Next Day Delivery service that arrives by 10:30 am. This will get your package to us in quickest and most cost-effective way possible.

Fantastic Transcription Rates

Audio Enhancement for Difficult Tapes