A Guide to Digital Voice Recorders

With cassettes and tapes, one had to rewind the recording to hear it. But with a digital recorder, the recorded voices can be played back and heard immediately. A recording can be edited, i.e. split and deleted too from the digital recorders. Another reason for increasing popularity of digital recorders over the earlier ones is that they are relatively cheaper and clutter-free.

Voice recorders can prove to be very useful and time-saving. A person doesn’t need to write down every detail of, say a discussion or an interview if he or she has a digital voice recorder. He or she can simply record it and hence maintain a record of the information gathered.  For a profession such as that of a journalist or a detective, digital voice recorders act as a saviour. A journalist can record any event, interview, comments or so on using a digital voice recorder and later on use the same information while writing an article later on. Detectives and even the police, use digital voice recorders to maintain a record of important conversations which may be used as an evidence for a case. A large chunk of the modern technology-savvy students too make the use of digital recorders to record important lectures and use the recordings later on for assignments and examination purposes.

Digital voice recorders come with special features which cater to demands of different types of use. Some features which prove to be useful to all its users are like that of a Timer.  One can set a starting and ending time of a recording and hence he or she doesn’t have to hit stop or play or record again and again. The process of recording becomes fairly clutter- free and easy with the help of a timer. Once recorded, these files can be retrieved from the folder they were saved in and used or edited according to the user’s needs.

In case a digital recorder is to be used by numerous users at the same time, some recorders offer exclusive user IDs or voice recognition for each user’s convenience and to maintain a sense of privacy.

A few pointers which one must keep in mind while using or buying a digital voice recorder are as follows: 1. There are multiple types of digital recorders available in the market, each of which offers different and exclusive features. It is, therefore, important to select a recorder which delivers what one needs. While buying a digital voice recorder one must keep in mind the kind of use for which he or she needs the recorder and accordingly decide the audio range of the device.

2. While buying a digital recorder one must make rough estimates about the minimum hours of time one needs to record. Since the most important aspect of the digital recorder is the number of hours it can record sounds without interruption, it is important for the buyer to consider this and then make his or her choice. For those who need to have long recordings, they should prefer digital recorders which can eliminate blank spaces.

3. All Digital recorders have built in microphones but due to surroundings, environmental noise can hamper the quality of the recording. One must try to record information in an environment which is free from background noise. However, that is may not be possible every time. In such a situation one is advised to buy an external microphone which will help in improving the overall quality of the recording.

4. While recording, one must speak clearly and crisply using proper pauses and punctuations or else the meaning of the information recorded may not be understood in the same manner as it was originally meant to be. If a person mumbles or speaks too fast, the interpretation may be tough later on and the information will cease to be of any use.

Once a person figures out what sort of a digital recorders suits his or her requirements best, they can prove to be very useful and helpful.