Quality: A Shared Responsibility
Quality is important to you and to us, and if you do your part and we do ours quality will be high and, surprisingly, costs you less. Your part includes quality of recording and information you supply to us about your project.
What You Can do to Achieve Quality Recording:
Take care with your recording. Poorly recorded material is difficult, frustrating and very tiring to transcribe, takes more time to type and proof, and all this extra time costs you more. Even worse, data your project depends on is lost.
We have in the past and will continue to turn down recordings
that are too difficult to follow. Don’t let this happen to you!
NOTE: If you are new to recording sessions or would like suggestions, please contact us before conducting your sessions.
About Us
Five In-Person Recording Tips
1. Use a digital recorder that makes clear, crisp recordings and become familiar with its controls ahead of using it.
2. Choose a quiet location, one that won’t become disruptive during your session.
3. Test your location and equipment with another person before conducting a session, i.e., test record and listen to the results.
4. Remember that capturing the interviewee’s voice is the purpose of the interview; therefore, place your recorder or an external microphone in that speaker’s direction.
5. Make a backup recording, in case the original fails.
Four Remote Recording Tips
1. Use Zoom, a conference call line or other service that includes the option of recording sessions. We can readily convert any audio or video format you send us for use with transcribing software.
2. Don’t place a recording device next to a phone speaker to record. The result is nearly always muddy and distorted.
3. If background noise or audibility problems develop during a remote session, pause and mute participants or try to resolve the issue before continuing since such interference is likely to make capturing words impossible.
4. Make a backup recording, in case the original fails.
Tips on Informing Us of Your Project
Informing us “educates” our ears, teaches us about your project. Too many times we’ve been sent work with no information, and with repeated inquiries, we are told little if anything more. This silence costs us more time in researching terms and names on our own. This takes time, slows the completion of a project, costs a client more, and, in some cases, affects the quality of the transcription.
1. Tell us what your project is about and who is participating in your research. A thesis statement would suffice.
2. Send a list of repeated questions, your instrument, if you are using one.
3. Provide a list of technical terms used and references, acronyms and unusual names.