Buying The Right Equipment For Efficient Audio Transcription

Ravi Kolhe | 5/24/2013 | | | | |
Recorded audio is an important part of any business process. Any spoken word that has any sort of future business relevance can, will and should be recorded. Once the recording is done, it is data which can be processed in many ways so that future business managers can come back to it for additional input. A recording is almost like a time capsule. Business activities that are usual suspects and become part of business recording are instances of interviews, high level strategic discussions, customer conversations and supplier meetings.
One of the most common practices and post processing done to audio recordings are transcriptions. Transcription, you are probably aware of this by now, is the process where the audio information is converted to text via an audio transcription agent or a computer based software. There are some easy benefits of doing this. Much of it has to do with the audio data now available in a readable format which is always preferable to listening to lengthy audio files.

Transcription Challenges

One common complaint or feedback that transcription companies will tell their clients is that the recordings were of poor quality.

While service companies like transcription will do and work with what is given to them, a right that clients will always exercise, poor quality audio has other problems. The lower is the audio quality, the more time transcription companies have to spend to decipher and decrypt it. More time means more effort. Effort is tied to the final bill, which completes the circle. In essence, poor audio will mean huge transcription bill for your company.

If your company generates a lot of audio data and uses transcription extensively, then you need to solve this problem at the source. This is a technology based problem and yes, we have technology that can solve it as well.

Digital Recording

Buying The Right Equipment For Efficient Audio Transcription
Despite the all the technology that surrounds us, many of the businesses are still stuck in the previous decade when it comes to recording equipment. We are referring specifically to the practice of businesses using recording equipment which stores recorded information on magnetic or similar archaic technology. These old fashioned technology were cool in their time but now simply become a liability. No matter how high end is your analog, non-digital recording equipment, thanks to the laws of physics which cannot be overcome, the recorded audio always has some loss.

Further, all transcriptions happens via digital files, which means, you will eventually have to convert this analogically stored information to digital format anyway. So, not only are you recording information at low fidelity, you are also spending additional time and money to get it up to speed.

That is why we would suggest you completely overhaul the entire company’s recording equipment and opt for digital recorders. These recorders will store the file in a digital format. Digital storage is small, provides high fidelity and never wears out. This will save you a lot of money and time. One cannot really put a price on how much this saved time can come back to help you, business wise.

Multi Directional Recorders

Once you have taken care of digitizing your recording equipment, we move on to something that is a lot more desirable and a definitely advanced.

This is a feedback that you may or may not receive from your transcription company. Your employees, though may be more vocal about this. Much of the time, there will always be more than one participant in a particular discussion. Obviously, they are not going to huddle together in a single direction to which the recording head is pointed. With such a setup you will find that some speaker’s voice is recorded at excellent quality while others are barely visible.

The recording machine does not care but you do want everybody’s voice to be recorded. This is why you should always, and we cannot stress this enough, get multi directional recorders that have the capacity to record from every possible direction. Of course, they will cost a lot more than regular recorders. That is when you have to remember that uneven voice recording of the group meeting is another driving factor of transcription bills. What you spend on the omnidirectional recorders will save you money, a lot more money, elsewhere.

If you are not sure about purchasing this equipment, you may also want to consider leasing or renting such equipment from your service provider. Even if your service partner does not have a leasing facility, they will at least advise you about buying the equipment which works best with their systems.

The author believes that audio typing services go a long way in making business practices more efficient. He trusts the best transcription services company for this.

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