Cool tools for Technical Authors – audio recording

We’re sharing some of the tools we use at Cherryleaf, and this time we’ll look at audio recording tools.

It can be very useful for a Technical Author to be able to record what someone is saying. If you are gathering information from a Subject Matter Expert, you can let them just speak naturally and quickly. This can reduce the demands on their time, and it often leads to a more relaxed conversation. There can be other instances where it’s not practical to use a notepad or computer to write or type notes.

Apps for tablets and smartphones

Some of my colleagues swear by Recordium, a recording app for Apple iPads and iPhones we’ve mentioned in a previous post.

Recordium enables you to tag and highlight sections of a recording,while playing or recording audio, so you can easily find the key moments in a long interview. You can also add attachments such as notes, tags, and pictures to any part of the recording, although we don’t use this feature. Recordium also enables you to vary the playback speed. We’ve found this useful when SMEs are using specialist terminology – you can slow down the recording to check what it was they actually said. Listening at a faster speed is also a useful way of reviewing a recording quickly.

Our Android users tend to use the Smart Voice Recorder app. Smart Voice Recorder is able to skip relative silence on the fly. As soon as someone speaks, it restarts the recording. This can be slightly unsettling at first, but you soon get used to it.

The quality from both smartphones and tablets is pretty good, especially if it’s purely for note-taking purposes.

Digital recording devices

I prefer to use a digital voice recorder. Having a separate device means I’m less likely to run out of battery, particularly when digital recorders use standard AAA batteries.

The Philips Voice Tracer is a digital recorder that contains three microphones. It uses one of those microphones to detect and reduce background noise. Its size means you can have it on a desk or in your hand, and you’re unlikely to forget it’s in your jacket or trouser pocket (which has happened to me with the Olympus recorders!). It records at audio CD-like quality, which is useful for when you are recording screencasts. There’s also an optional 360° meeting microphone for boardroom-style meetings.

What do you use?

Share your suggestions below.