Advice on improving the quality of your digital recordings
Digital Secretary has many years of experience of transcribing interviews for its customers. From that experience we have compiled this advice to anyone preparing to capture interviews on a digital recorder, whether research interviews, business interviews or interviews undertaken as part of a student's study.
The information you collect in your interview is valuable to you so take some steps to make sure none of that information is lost. Poor quality recordings will lead to loss of information once transcribed which no amount of filtering of the audio or careful listening will recover. It will also lead to more QA checks being required to be undertaken by you once you receive the transcript back.
A bit of planning beforehand will increase the quality of your recording and protect the time you have invested. Rarely can interviews be undertaken again if they aren't captured correctly first time.
Equipment
Don't be tempted to buy cheapest digital voice recorder. Buy a good quality recorder particularly one intended for meetings as well as interviews. It will possibly have a different setting for dictation and another for meetings/interviews
Choosing your location to make the recording
This is probably the most important factor. It may seem obvious but many people fail to think about this in advance. Don't be tempted to look for somewhere to undertake the interview at the last minute.
Try to find a room for just you, the interviewer, and the interviewee only
Make sure the room is away from roads, parking areas, turning areas and refuse collection areas if the room is not sound insulated
Ensure there are no items of noisy electrical equipment in the room that could create humming on the recording. Turn off such equipment if possible, particularly equipment with fans
Don't carry out interviews in corridors, these are particularly noisy
Don't carry out interviews where telephone calls are being made
Don't carry out interviews in open plan offices
Distractions
Ensure you aren't disturbed by informing people an interview is in progress or by placing a notice on the door
Ensure all mobiles are turned off completely and not just set to silent mode. The recorder will pick up signals from mobiles even if set to silent. These signals which can occur just before the mobile rings can overwhelm speech on the recording
Make sure there will be no building work going on. Even building work elsewhere in the building can come through quite loudly on a recording
Avoid carrying out the interview when you or the interviewee have a cold or flu. Reschedule if necessary
Placement of the recorder
Avoid placing the recorder on a table that may be leant on or knocked during the interview
It may be worth insulating the recorder or microphone from any hard surface perhaps using a neoprene mouse mat or other soft surface but make sure the microphone is not obstructed as a result
If you have separate microphones make sure they are placed where they will not be brushed, particularly by movement of the interviewer or interviewee
Introduce the interview on the recording before commencement
It is useful for both yourself and the transcriber for you to state who the interview is with, when it was undertaken, to state and spell out any important names beforehand such as company and people names
You can also use the introduction to test sound levels and perhaps get the interviewee to introduce themselves to test their sound levels. Carefully wind the recording forward to start the main interview to avoid clipping the introduction once you have checked it for sound levels or start a new file, but supply both to the transcription service you are using
Speaking
Brief the interviewee before hand, politely asking them to make sure they speak up for the recording (reminding them if necessary during the interview). Tell the interviewee to be sure they understand the questions before attempting to answer and ask them to ask for clarification of questions if they don't understand what is being asked. Interviewees have a tendency to mumble when they are sure what is being asked and the response will be of less value to you if they did not understand the question. Don't put them "on the spot"
Avoid talking over the interviewee
Avoid verbally acknowledging what the interviewee is saying whilst they are speaking and use body language instead
Think of the transcriptionist. If you think something won't have come out properly on the recording restate it. It will be easier to do that whilst fresh in your memory than trying to remember what was said if a blank has to be left in the transcript for you to fill in
Meetings
We tend not to undertake transcription of meetings or multi-speaker recordings as the quality is usually too poor for good quality transcription, but here's some advice if you are doing this.
A poorly chaired meeting will result in a poor transcript. Make sure someone takes control of the meeting and invites people to speak and stops attendees talking over each other
Multiple speakers make speaker identification very difficult. It may be worth attendees stating their name before speaking if speaker identification in the transcript is important to you
Meetings tend to require a larger room and for speakers to be further from the microphone than with dictation or interviews. Use a recorder that is intended for meeting use. Make sure you set it to meeting mode if it has such a function and use external microphones positioned throughout the room
Do not be tempted to keep moving the recorder as a substitution for external microphones, you will drown out the speech as you move the recorder and create an awful lot of loud noise on the recorder for the transcriptionist
Getting the file transferred to your chosen transcription service
Interviews tend to be long and the resulting sound file very large. This can present problems when e-mailing particularly when there are limits on your e-mail system or other e-mail systems on the size of file. It can also clog up your inbox to the extent your important e-mails bounce when your inbox is full
Use a transcription service that allows file transfer via the Web Browser. These can be faster, more reliable and can, as in the case of Digital Secretary, have security benefits through the use of encryption, both during transfer and when stored on the server
We hope you find the above useful. If you would like to print it off as a check list you will find a copy of this page as a Word Document here.
