How to ensure a high quality recording

We go out of our way to make certain that you get the highest quality transcriptions it’s possible for us to deliver. However we are hostages to the quality of your data.

• When you see a the word inaudible in one of our transcriptions, you can rest assured that at least four human beings sat there with headphones on, playing that sequence of audio over and over again, before they decided to leave it and move on. We even use audio engineers, at our own expense, to help us fix poor quality audio files so we can do a better job for you.

But the unfortunate fact is that sometimes there’s nothing to be done. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, sometimes there’s no there there. All we can do is hope that you remember enough about what transpired to fill in the blanks, because the audio doesn’t tell us.

With that in mind, here are a number of pointers to help you have better success with your audio, organized by topic.

The Environment

• Listen to the ambient environment
  Your ears have much greater dynamic range than the typical recording, and when we’re present in an environment we somehow have the ability to selectively ignore ambient noise. Listening to a recording is much harder. A loud air conditioner, a fan, rattling pipes, almost anything creating a heavy blanket of background noise in the environment can put your recording at risk.  If your environment has a lot of noise, first try to fix it. Talk to the facility’s management, try to turn the air conditioning down, etc. If you can’t do any of those things, at least be much more vigilant in checking your recording quality in advance.
• Watch out for noise around the microphone
  Whatever you are using for recording will pick up more sound from things that are close to it than things further away. A microphone near a computer may hear nothing but the fingers banging on the keyboard or the scrape of the mouse. Try to ensure the microphone is reasonably far away from any such distractions. It’s also a good idea to put your mike or recorder on something soft, like a handkerchief or a glove, to stop noise from the table itself (caused by, for example, a person moving something on the table several feet away).
• Watch out for wind
  If you are outside in a windy environment, the sound of that wind can be like a hurricane to the microphone. If you are in a windy place, check the sound quality, and try to use a microphone with a windscreen (usually a metal mesh or foam ball on the head of the mike).
• Ensure you are recording your speaker
  If you are in a noisy environment, or doing work in the field, try to ensure your microphone is actually able to record the person you are speaking to, and not just everything in the ambient environment.

The Equipment

• Rule #1: Check Your Audio!
  Do a test. Go into whatever environment you will be working in, turn on the recorder and take a little test recording. Play it back. Can you hear what’s being said? Is there a lot of noise or interference?
• Watch Your Levels
  If your recording device has an input volume level control and a little equalizer/volume level display while recording, check them. If the little equalizer or sound meter display is not moving much, your sound levels are too low and a lot of information is being lost. If they are always all the way to the right, the volume is too high and you’ll lose information that way as well. Adjust the input volume or move the recorder. If you don’t have anything this fancy, just make a test recording and check it!
• Record in High Quality
  Record with the highest quality sound your recorder can make. Don’t be tempted to use SP or LP get more out of your tapes or flash cards. Doing so eliminates dynamic range, and can make your recording much harder to understand.
• Ensure that the recorder is set to record the room, and not just your voice
  Many recorders have switches for dictation (close voice) recording or room recording when multiple people are talking. 

Your Subjects

• Don’t let everyone talk at once
  No matter how good your environment and equipment is, if it’s a crowd scene and everyone is talking at once, it will be impossible to tell what’s being said. You could lose a lot of valuable data. It’s important to retain control of your speakers and just let one person speak at a time wherever possible. If there is an interruption, take a moment to repeat what the primary speaker was saying for clarity, and then ask the secondary speaker to repeat again. You’ll thank yourself later.
• Make sure it’s clear who’s talking, and about what
  Ensure we have a good chance to know everyone’s name in the course of the recording, if this information is important to your transcript, and that the subject matter of each element of your research or other work is mentioned as you move from step to step. Keep in mind that you have another person in the room — your transcriptionist, who can’t see anything and needs to be informed audibly of what is happening.
• Death to loud snacks!
  If you are running a session like a focus group, be incredibly careful what types of snacks you bring into your session or allow your facility to bring in! It sounds obvious, but potato chips are a bad idea. Crinkly plastic bags are a bad idea. You’ll lose audio.

Preparing Your Data

• Always keep a copy
  Once your recording session is complete, you will be holding in your hand the only copy of that recording in existence. Don’t let it leave your possession. Never send your only copy of your data to us, or give it to a third party without making a copy first.
• Do not overly compress the files you send us
  Having a great quality recording does no good if you pass it through a trash compactor before you send it to us. Dramatically dropping the file size can make the upload easier, but it also destroys valuable data and almost guarantees a lower quality result.