iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

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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Olympus Voice Australia have completed their revamp of the digital dictaphone voice recorder range by today announcing the launch of the new Windows and Mac compatible Olympus DS-2400. This sees the demise of the last hanger on in their digital dictaphone line, the DS-2300 which is now now longer available in Australia.

Unusually the DS-2400 is not black, like the other two digital dictaphones released earlier this year (the DS-5000 and DS-3400) but is does support the new DSS Pro digital audio format (which creates .ds2 audio files) which Olympus are going for in a big way.

The Olympus DS-2400 is the cheapest in the digital dictaphone range so you lose the snazzy cradle and the battery life needs to be monitored and maintained by the user. But the for people converting from analogue tape dictaphones or replacing an ageing DS-2300 you will be very happy with the DS-2400.

Rewind and review of your notes is simple using the metal rocker switch on the side. Audio can also be inserted and edited on the recorder itself. Please note though that the DS-2400 only records in .ds2 audio format. This is fine if your in house typist has an AS-2400 (not yet available in Australia) or AS-5000 transcription kit or if you outsource your transcription to one of Australia’s larger transcription businesses like our sister company The Transcription People. However smaller transcription services may have issues with the .ds2 audio format so check with them first. It is NOT possible to convert the DSS Pro (.ds2) audio to DSS Classic (.dss) files using the included DSS Player Standard (Windows) and DSS Player (Mac) for the DS-2400. The convert .ds2 to .dss and/or .wma feature is only available with the dictation module that comes with the DS-3300 and DS-5000 models.  To be honest the last thing you should be doing is converting your audio files before your send them away for transcription.

For people who are looking to replace an older DS-2300 digital voice recorder with a DS-2400 and who already have an AS-2300 transcription kit in the office all is not lost. The software with the DS-2400 will allow you to upgrade one AS-2300 kit to an AS-2400 kit for free, keeping your transcription kit compatible with older recorders and the new DS-2400. There are a couple of very important steps while doing this, please email us for advice if you plan to do this: sales@dictate.com.au

Click here for the Olympus FAQ page for the DS-2400

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On a quiet Tuesday evening, nothing much to do, thought I would do some surfing on the web. Called into one of the most static sites you will find, the Olympus Voice Australia website. Clicked on the what’s new link and boom – DS-3400 Coming Soon !

Why was I surprised by this? Well, apart from the fact that the site rarely changes, with Dictate Australia being one of Olympus’ top online resellers we thought we might have, you know, been told!

Here is some information I have gleaned so far. Nobody seems to know when this is coming to Australia, I would estimate towards the end of Q3 2009, but this is just a guess, nothing official from Olympus Voice as yet.

Pricing is also a guessing game, I have the recorder on my site at an estimated RRP of $540 incl. GST, this is going from the RRP on the Olympus America website. My thoughts are that it will be around the same price as the DS-2300 model which is due to be replaced shortly by the DS-2400. Time will tell and there will be updates here as soon as I know.

A quick skim through the specs the things that jump out at me are: there is no cradle as there is no power option, this one runs on batteries only. As is the trend at Olympus this will record in the DS2 (DSS Pro) format although the recorder comes with DSS Pro software so “classic mode” may be available. There is no slider on the side like the DS-5000, instead there are push buttons, similar to the old DS-3300.

More news as and when it comes from Olympus on the new digital dictaphone …

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There is sometimes confusion in the digital voice recorder world and a very common question I hear is “what is the difference between a digital dictaphone and a digital notetaker?” Often people buy a voice recorder without calling first for advice or 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 Voice Recorder

• 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, 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, 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. Some people find this concept a little hard to follow and often worry if they stop and start recording that they will end up with multiple audio files. Although this is the case it really is not a big deal. Digital audio files can quickly and easily be loaded for audio playback, regarless of whether the audio spans a single file or multiple. Digital notetakers tend to record in more proprietry audio formats like .WMA (Windows Media Audio) in the case of Olympus and .MP3 (MPEG-3 layer) in the case of Philips.

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.

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