iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

Philips Dictation Australia continue there surge forward in 2009, hot on the heals of their awesome new DVT (Digital Voice Tracer) range of digital notetakers (did I mention that they are now finally Mac compatible, only several times) they have just announced out of their Worldwide headquarters in Vienna – Dragon NatutrallySpeaking 10 – Voice Recorder Edition. I know, makes you want to say “wow” loudly.

Philips Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 DVR Edition - LFH0660/10

It is fantastic to see some more innovation from Philips, taking the initiative to work globally with Nuance, the Dragon NaturallySpeaking people to provide an affordable package for people looking to get into the voice recognition. We have seen huge growth in the voice recognition software, both Mac and Windows over the past year as professionals, students, authors etc give up on the need to type for hours. Most people talk around the 120 words per minute mark, way faster than most can type so why not let your computer do it for you.

More

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the quickest way to get single speaker audio transcribed into a document. The software is really quite amazing and it recognition characteristics are phenomenal. However, some things outside Dragon NaturallySpeaking can slow it slightly, especially on older lower spec PCs.

Here is a tip for you, if you are finding that your dictation using Dragon NaturallySpeaking is lagging slightly when you dictate into Microsoft Word this is generally caused by the overhead of Word trying to spell and/or grammar check your dictation as it is written. If you have a well trained NaturallySpeaking profile you might want to try dictating straight into Notepad or even Wordpad, you will find that NaturallySpeaking dumps out your text alot quicker and smoother allowing you to talk even faster.

Once you have verbosed yourself into Notepad simply copy and paste into Word and let it do its thing with the spell and/or grammar check.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Digital voice recorders are split into two distinct types, digital dictaphones and digital notetakers, both have fairly specific uses. In this blog post I will try and explain the difference so you will know which type of voice recorder to lean towards, should you ever need to record voice. If you are still not sure please call or email and get some advice, often people buy a voice recorder without fully researching a product only to find that the recorder they buy does not have the functions they thought they wanted or needed.

Slider Switch On The Olympus DS-5000 Digital Dictaphone

So here I will try to clear up some of the confusion between the two digital voice recorder types and will attempt to explain what each is commonly used for. Generally speaking the functionality of the recorders includes:

Digital Notetaker

• Typically used to record multiple speaker audio: lectures, interviews, meetings, focus groups etc.
• Audio is usually recorded in one take or with few interruptions.
• High quality mic is required to pickup all the speakers.

Digital Dictaphone

• Typically for single speaker audio – just one person dictating.
• Typically used for recording letters or short notes.
• For people who are interupted alot during their dictation session.
• Includes rewind/review functionality emulating the old analogue tape dictaphones.

Above are just a few generalisations about to two recorder types. Here at Dictate Australia we tend to find that the digital dictaphones usually go to people who are converting from analogue tape dictaphones and are usually in the medical or legal industry. Digital dictaphones have a rewind/review function, this allows the recorder to emualte the old analogue tape systems. The rewind/review function is typically activated using a slider switch, the image to the left is the slider on the Olympus DS-5000 digital dictaphone. The user can stop and start recording at will and the key point here is that when recording is re-started they are able to “rewind” the digital audio a little, hear what was said last and then continue recording from that point onward, much like a tape. When they have completed their dictation they press a button and one distinct audio file is created. Digital dictaphones tend to utilise the DSS (Digital Speech Standard) audio format which results in very small digital audio files (.ds2 or .dss), making them easy to transfer across the internet via email.

With a digital notetaker, these are generally used to record an audio session, typically lectures, interviews, sound bites, meetings and focus groups. Although alot of people do use these for single speaker notes also. These types of voice recorders are very simple to use, press a button to start recording, press another button to stop recording. This then produces a single digital audio file. It is possible with most notetaker models to pause/resume recording however unlike the digital dictaphones you can NOT rewind/review audio and then continue recording.  Digital notetakers tend to record in more proprietry audio formats like .WMA (Windows Media Audio) as well as the more common .MP3 (MPEG-3 layer) format. Many can now also record very high quality PCM .WAV files. Because of the high quality of the audio the file sizes tend to be much larger than those produced by the dictaphones. Add this to the fact the a meeting/interiew/focus group could go on for hours the files recorded would be too large to email.

Moving large files around the internet is common practice, most good transcription companies, like The Transcription People, have their own secure webservers for client audio files. You can also use free or cheap services like Dropbox to move files around.

Digital notetakers tend to have excellent all round audio pickup as they are designed for multi speaker recording. Conversly, the digital dictaphones tend to be poor when used in meetings situations. We have seen that in the past with the Olympus DS-4000 dictaphone, when used in a one on one interview the audio pickup was very poor. Olympus have rectified this in the newer DS-5000 model which as a top of the range professional recorder can easily cope with a large number of multiple speakers aswell as being probably the best digital dictaphone around for single speaker notes and letters.

I love my job. One of the main reasons for that statement is that I get to speak to broad range of people from all walks of life all across Australia daily. One minute it might be a family member in the bush who wants to record a grandparent telling stories of their life for future family generations to hear and for them to transcibe into a family history record. Next minute it might be a journalist in Melbourne looking for the best voice recorder to grab quick, clear soundbites of someone in the news ready for them to quote in a story later that day.

One thing most people who buy a digital voice recorder have in common is the need to listen to the audio while typing up notes or a verbatum account of the audio. For those who are not in the know, this usually involves playing the audio back through Windows Media Player or QuickTime flicking quickly to Word to type a few words then flicking back to the audio player to stop and rewind so you can hear the last sentence or two again. This in itself will very quickly become tedious and a truely painful experience.

More

Have you ever finished a phone call and thought gee I wish I could have recorded that conversation? Maybe you are a journalist and regularly interview people by phone or you have regular business meetings by phone?

The TP-7 telephone pickup mic from Olympus is a microphone that can be used with any Olympus digital voice recorder to easily record phone conversations. It can be used with any phone – mobile, office phone even a pay phone.

Olympus TP-7 Telephone Pickup Mic

The TP-7 connects via the jack plug to any Olympus digital voice recorder, the other end fits in your ear like a iPod earbud. It then sits neatly between the phone and your ear while you hold the conversation. It can directly pickup the audio from the phone speaker usually held to your ear and also from your spoken words all recorded easily to the voice recorder.

Quite a neat gadget from Olympus and a popular product with journalists. Officially this works only with Olympus voice recorders but I have heard of people with Sony’s using it also.

Philips 9162 Telephone Pickup Mic

Philips has something similar and is called the 9162 telephone pickup mic. Slightly cheaper than the Olympus it comes in a nifty pouch with spare ear bud cushions and a retractable cord. It follows the same principal by fitting in your ear making it compatible with any phone you use.

The Philips 9162 can be used with the Philips Digital Pocket Memo (DPM) series, Philips Digital Voice Tracer (DVT) series, analog pocket memos and the Philips 955 conference recording system.

We have just received our demo LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen in the office ready to produce some reviews and video demos for both Mac and Windows users. There has been a buzz about this product in Australia for while now on the WhirlPool forums and also on Twitter which is where I heard about the product.

The SmartPen is a computer inside a pen, while you write your notes in the special LiveScribe Dot Paper notepad the built in camera records exactly what you are writing. If you also record audio at the same time, e.g. if you are in a lecture, meeting or conference the audio is linked to what you are writing at that time, word for word. When you review your notes in the notepad you simply tap on any word that you wrote and any audio recorded at that moment is played back, as they say on the LiveScribe website you “never miss a word”. Your written notes and audio can also be uploaded to your PC or Mac and the notes and audio played back on your computer. You can even share your notes and audio online.

Here is a short promo video from LiveScribe with a quick overview of the SmartPen. We will post more videos in the near future showing you the features and the functions of the SmartPen on both Mac and Windows in the near future as we prepare ourselves to supply and support this product within Australia.

Dictate Australia will be selling the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen from May 2009 – Click here for product information and pricing.