Creating the best voice recorder has been a desire of mankind for centuries, perhaps millennia. The first “playable” recording was on paper in 1860 by the French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville and was not meant to be a sound recording but a visual representation of sound. Fast forward one hundred and sixty-one years to 2021 and recording has evolved to interplanetary levels. Here on earth, today, we are focussing on helping you choose the best voice recorder for your needs.
What Is The Recording For?
Before browsing for voice recorders and dictation equipment, you need to be clear about all the situations you will be using the equipment in, for example:
- Is it for meetings at work?
- Or university or community lectures?
- Do you need it for interviews?
- Do you need superior playback quality for a transcription typist?
- Do you commute and need compact, lightweight equipment?
- Do you have a budget and need relatively inexpensive options?
- Do you need to record five days’ worth of audio or two hours?
- Do you need to be able to transfer data from anywhere or only via cable to a laptop?
- Do you need voice recognition software and automatic transcription?
The Best Voice Recorder Selection Process
Having answered the above questions, you can now move on to the next set of filtering questions.
- In what type of environment will the recording happen: Indoors or outdoors??
- Will you be in a small room or a cavernous area?
- Are there ‘hard’ walls and fall bouncing soundwaves or curtains and carpets?
- Will the sound that you are recording be delivered via speakers or one-on-one?
- Do you want a handheld microphone?
- Do you record in poorly lit areas, or after hours, and would like a backlit digital screen on the recording equipment?
- Are you recording for transcription, brainstorming ideas that pop into your head, or for playback at a presentation or a podcast?
- Will you be doing this regularly? A unit that supports rechargeable batteries will be a cost saver.
How Risky Is A Cheap Option?
Short answer: Very. The market is saturated with recording and dictation equipment at all levels of quality, and the majority is suboptimal and the equivalent of throwing your money into the waste bin. Top recorders deliver superb playback, and that’s essentially the whole purpose of most recordings: enjoyable, clear playback.
Cheap usually becomes expensive in the long term. You will probably experience poor battery life, costly extras, early replacement of components, or the inability to replace parts.
Price delivers quality of recording and playback, quality of components, diversity of uses per equipment, longevity and long-term savings. Decide which features are needs or nice-to-haves and this will narrow down your options. Then choose the best voice recorder you can possibly afford for the best post-purchase experience.
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