iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

So, this year has been a big one for Olympus voice with a revamp of all their digital recorder range. Not content with being left behind Philips had a go back in April when they rolled out, finally, Mac compatible note takers with the DVT (Digital Voice Tracer) range comprising of the 660/860/880 models. This week Philips have done a rejig in this range and discontinued the young 660/860/880 recorders and replaced them with new model numbers although essentially they are the previous recorders upgraded. Philips have also added some innovative voice recorder packages, like a set aimed at reporters and a set aimed at writers who might want to attempt their own transcription.

So what has been discontinued and what are their replacement models:

• Philips DVT LFH0660 discontinued, replaced by DVT LFH0662 (2GB – RRP AU$189)
• Philips DVT LFH0860 discontinued, replaced by DVT LFH0862 (4GB – RRP AU$249)
• Philips DVT LFH0880 discontinued, replaced by DVT LFH0882 (4GB – RRP AU$279)
• Philips DVR DragonNaturallySpeaking Voice Recorder Edition LFH-660/10 discontinued, replaced by LFH0667 (RRP AU$259)

A common change across the range is an increase in memory, that makes sense with solid state memory continuing to grow in size and drop in price. Also added to all recorders are a visual record level indicator and the USB connection, as well as powering the unit, will now also charge a rechargeable battery.

Other notable changes include uncompressed PCM recording now available on the LFH0662. High Sensitivity mic added to the LFH0862 and LFH0882 with the new “Zoom” function.

As mentioned another innovative thing Philips have done is create some Digital Voice Tracer combination packs, new packs are:

• LFH0868 (RRP AU$279) – 862 Digital Voice Tracer with docking station.
• LFH0888 (RRP AU$339) – 882 Digital Voice Tracer with docking station.
• LFH0867 (RRP AU$369) – Writers Set. 862 Digital Voice Tracer with the media player USB hand control (LFH2370/00)  which allows audio control with yours thumbs.
• LFH0885 (RRP AU$369) – Reporters Set. 882 Digital Voice Tracer with stereo lapel mic.
• LFH0895 (RRP AU$749) – Compact Meeting Recorder. I like this one, 882 Digital Voice Tracer with two of the best looking and good quality boundary mics available.

Expect to see these new models appearing around Australia from October.

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At Dictate Australia we often get calls from people who have been using their trusy Pearlcorder micro or mini cassette dictaphone for years who are in a slight panic. Either their analogue tape dictaphone has given up the ghost or they can’t find replacement cassettes or their tape based transcription kit has retired after years of service. My advice to all these people is go digital. Why? Here are four good reasons:

1. Audio Quality

Digital voice recorders utilise the latest digital technology. That means they have amazing audio pickup and can record for hours on end. The audio quality from a digital voice recorder is far superior to that of analogue tapes. Whether you are recording single speaker notes, an interview or large meetings the audio quality on good digital voice recorders is crisp and clear.

2. Happy Typist

Because the audio quality is so good from a digital voice recorder you will have a happy typist. No more will she have to strain to hear every word. If you go digital your typists can transcribe the audio on their PC or Mac, if the audio is quiet it can be boosted, if you are too loud they can turn the audio down, if you speak slowly they can speed you up to match their typing speed all using transcription software. With digital audio the clarity is better meaning your transcribed documents will have fewer timestamps or inaudible words and will likely be transcribed faster.

3. Easily Store Your Dictations

So you record to a tape, when the tape is finished then what? You write neatly on the cassette insert and file the cassette case in a drawer or in a cabinet. If you need to quickly access your audio you have to hunt through tens or hundreds of tapes to find the right one. When you do find the right tape you then have to spend time fast-forwarding through the tape trying to find the audio you need. With digital the audio is stored as a computer file. You can keep your audio on your PC or Mac, on your server, on your website even. Your audio can be easily accessed from anywhere in the world, quickly and easily if you store digital audio. You could even burn your audio to a CD or DVD for safe keeping.

4. Free Yourself from an On Site Typist

Yes we all love our on-site typist but in this day and age an on-site typist can be an expensive commodity for any business. Requiring a desk, a computer, insurance and taxes your typists can be a costly necessity just to be there to physically pass a micro cassette to. With digital audio your dictation can be sent anywhere in the world in seconds. This opens you up to either letting your trusty typist work from home or allows you to outsource your dictation to a professional outsource transcription service like our partner company The Transcription People – Australia.

I know what you are thinking, “my dictation is confidential can I trust sending it over the Internet?“. Well yes is the answer to that one. But with some provisos. If you use a professional transcription service they should have a secure file transfer mechanism in place which will encrypt your audio as it travels from your digital voice recorder to their dedicated secure server. Avoid sending confidential audio by email unless both the sender and receiver use a secure certificate. Avoid sending your audio across a secure connection to a third party, such as a service like SendThisFile, although the file transfer may be secure your audio is housed on a server out of the control of your transcription service.

The Transcription People own and administer their own servers so you can be sure that your audio is going securely and directly to them.

What To Look For?

Digital voice recorders come in two types, digital dictaphones and digital note takers. Digital dictaphones are generally aimed at people who dictate letters and notes, usually but not restricted to people in the legal and medical fields. Digital note takers are typically used for recording interviews, meetings, focus groups and lecture or conference audio. Click here for our previous blog post on the difference between a digital dictaphone and a digital note taker.

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This week I was lucky enough to attend FlyingSoloLIVE, an expo run by the FlyingSolo team held at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney. The day consisted of a number of keynote speeches by well known successful Australian business people and social media experts all aimed to educate and inspire Australian solo and small business people. The event was held as part of the New South Wales Governments Small Business Month.

For the event I decided to take along three very good but very different digital audio recorders. The Olympus WS-450s digital voice recorder, the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen and loaded on my iPhone an app called iProRecorder. I wanted to see how each performed, which gave the best audio quality and how they lasted during a full day of recording. All my recordings were made in the Theatre Atrium at the Australian Technology Park. I took sample recordings from the back of the theatre (around 90 feet from the stage), the middle (approx. 40 feet back) and from the front row. The event had professional audio visual and the speakers had microphones.

Olympus WS-450S – This is a very new digital voice recorder launched in Australia just last month.  This is the type of digital voice recorder we sell day in/day out on our online store dictate.com.au and is a fantastic all-round performer in the digital voice world. Both Mac and Windows compatible this recorder I recommend typically for single speaker note taking, interviews and small to medium sized meetings. This is not the kind of recorder I would usually recommend for a conference type situation. For this I would generally advise the next models up (WS-550M, WS-560M or DS-55, DS-65) but I was confident that the results would be good. The device was set to SHQ recording mode and records audio in stereo .WMA audio format. The Olympus WS-450S has an RRP of AU$295 incl. GST.

The Olympus WS-450S performed very well and I was impressed, as I always am by Olympus, by the pickup quality of the audio. Staying power was no issue for the recorder and hardly made a dent in its power source which is one AAA battery. There was also no need to stress about how much audio I could squeeze onto the recorder as it has 1Gb of flash memory, even recording on the highest quality audio setting allows for 17 hours plus of recording so five or six one hour sessions were nothing.

• Ease of use:
• Staying power:
• Audio Quality:
• Value for Money:

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LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen – This is my current favourite gadget. Not only will the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen record the audio but also allows you to hand write notes in a special note pad as you are recording audio. Your hand written notes can be viewed on your computer (Windows or Mac) and the audio can be played back from any point  just by the click of a mouse or the touch of the pen on any of your hand written words or doodles. These digital hand written notes and audio can be easily shared online. This expo, as well as lectures, conferences, meetings and interviews is exactly what the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen is designed for so I had high expectations of this gadget. The device was set to High audio quality and the microphone sensitivity set to Automatic -  audio can be exported on a Mac in .aac format. The 2Gb LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen has an RRP of AU$329 incl. GST.

Well well … hands down the best audio recorder of the three the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen performed brilliantly. Regardless of where I was sat in the conference hall the audio pickup was very very good. Considering that most of the time the pen was laid on the chair next to me or I was writing notes in the LiveScribe Dot Paper pad. Not only do you get amazing audio pickup but the bonus of your handwritten notes as well, so really an amazing package. Like the Olympus, no issues with staying power with hardly a dent in the battery life and with a massive 2Gb of storage I could have recorded all day without a worry. I plan to write a blog post very soon dedicated to the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen and will include video so you can see the hand written notes in the software on a PC or Mac.

• Ease of use:
• Staying power:
• Audio Quality:
• Value for Money:

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iProRecorder iPhone App – This is the very first digital voice recorder app I loaded onto my iPhone and it has been used many times to record my notes and the occasional interview. Although iProRecorder can be used for conference/lecture recording as mentioned in the notes in the app store I was skeptical to see how the recorder would cope. The app was set to record in HQ recording mode and records in mono .WAV audio format. iProRecorder is currently AU$3.99 available from iTunes.

Although the audio quality was good the volume of the audio was very low. Using some software like Audacity or WavePad you can easily boost the volume but that adds time and complexity. Just listening to the audio through my computer was a struggle with the audio turned up. I could hear better with headphones connected listening to the audio on the iPhone. Staying power was also an issue, after a morning of recording, checking and sending email and tweeting by around 2pm (my phone was on from 6am) the battery was just about gone. I bought with me a Mophie Juice Pack Air rechargeable battery case to boost the iPhone power and that took my through to the end of the day but without my recording would have been cut short. A little disappointing, I think this app is best used in close proximity interviews and meetings and for lectures in your average sized classroom instead of an auditorium. Via its in built web server the audio can be easily accessed across Wi-Fi from any Windows or Mac computer.

• Ease of use:
• Staying power:
• Audio Quality:
• Value for Money:

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MacSpeech Inc, the creators of MacSpeech Dictate voice recognition software for Mac powered by the Dragon speech recognition engine, today announced out of their headquarters in the US a new product in the MacSpeech Dictate range: MacSpeech Dictate International. The International version will ship with voice support for four languages, English (UK and US), French, Italian and German.

The surprise exclusion from the three new supported European languages (French, Italian and German) was Spanish, especially as the customer base for Spanish speakers would be huge. In their press release MacSpeech have acknowledged Spanish speakers, Andrew Taylor head of MacSpeech said “ .. we did not forget those who speak Spanish; when there is applicable news, rest assured we will announce it.” so read into that what you will, coming in the near future I would guess.

MacSpeech Dictate International is available now for purchase in the US and it is expected into Australia in a couple of weeks. It will be available as a stand alone package or for people who already own MacSpeech Dictate v1.5+ a cross grade licence will be available. For Australian English speakers you should still be looking at the standard MacSpeech Dictate v1.5+ version currently available as International will not support Australian English.

Click here for the full MacSpeech International press release.

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