How to Monitor the Sound Quality of your Interview

Date: July 16, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: Leave a reply

Monitoring your research interviews recording enables you to take the quality of your research interviews audio recording from meh to excellent. The Sony ICD-ux560 offers you two ways to monitor the sound quality of your research interviews; dB meters and the line out headphone jack. In this post I’m going to show you how to use both to greatly increase the sound quality of your research interviews. But first, a few caveats. This post is going to focus on using the Sony ICD-ux560, and the Giant Squid lavalier microphones and the Hosa splitter, because that’s the setup I recommend for recording interviews in a noisy location. Truth be told, if you are recording in a quiet location, you can get away with not monitoring the sound quality of your interviews. It would help increase the quality of the recorded audio, but you can get away with a lot. However, if you are recording your interviews… Continue reading…

Tascam DR-05x Review

Date: June 26, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: Leave a reply

When the Tascam DR-05x was released, earlier this year, I was really excited. The older Tascam DR-05 was one of the first digital voice recorders I bought, but it had a few issues and I got rid of it. My hope was that Tascam had resolved those issues. TLDR: they fixed a few issues, but didn’t fix the major one. Summary: Tascam DR-05x Review The Good: Comes with lots of features and functions. You will need the manual! Supports MicroSDXC SD cards. Mono recording… The Bad: Has the same radio interference issue that’s the bane of Tascam recorders. Bulky. Not great for voice recordings – very sensitive built-in microphones. Verdict: A definite improvement from the earlier version. Still has the radio interference issue. Packed with features. Gets my recommendation for a high fidelity digital recorder. Buy it now from Amazon. I do like Tascams because they come parked with lots of features. And in… Continue reading…

Using the Sony ICD-ux560: The 4 How-to’s

Date: March 22, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: 4 Replies

If you plan to use the Sony ICD-ux560 to conduct your research interviews, what are the 4 how-to’s you should learn before you conduct your first interview?
1. How to Store Your Recordings
Qualitative research projects produce a lot of data, you’ll need to be organized or the data will overwhelm you. And this tends to trip a lot of researchers. Continue reading…

Sony ICD-PX240 Review

Date: March 1, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: Leave a reply

So, I was looking for a recorder for dictation purposes; this year I do plan to dictate a lot of posts. I bought a few voice recorders that are built for dictation. And I have to say, so far, the Sony ICD-px240 has been my favorite dictation recorder.
Now, this recorder is not built to record interviews, meetings, focus group discussions etc. I’d not recommend it for those instances, and I’ll get to the reasons why in this post, but I’d definitely recommend this recorder if you’re looking to record your dictations. Continue reading…

Best Audio Recorder for Focus Groups (updated 2019)

Date: February 28, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: 14 Replies

Recording focus group discussion is not easy. Focus groups are notoriously hard to control and manage. But crucially, you’ll have to record sound from different sources and directions. That’s not easy. Luckily for you, there’s recording equipment that make recording focus group discussion easier. And that’s my intention, to share with you the best focus group recording devices.
In a previous post, I shared a general outline of how to record a focus group discussion Continue reading…

Sony ICD-ux560: Low Cut Filter (LCF) and Noise Cut Filter (NCF)

Date: February 11, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: 4 Replies

Sony ICD-ux560 comes with two recording filters; noise cut filter (NCF) and low cut filter (LCF). According to the ux560 manual, the NCF “cuts high-frequency sounds except for human voices as well as low-frequency sounds”. And the LCF, “cuts low-frequency sounds, including noise from projectors and roaring wind sounds.” That’s it.
I’ve tried to find more details about how these two filters work. I even reached out to Sony Continue reading…

Best Voice Recorder for Interviews (Updated 2019)

Date: February 7, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: 94 Replies

There’s a myriad of ways to record your research interviews. You could use your phone, laptop, or even a camcorder. However, I strongly recommend using a digital voice recorder. Handheld digital voice recorders are compact, affordable and enable you to easily manage the audio recordings, which makes the process of getting your dissertation interview transcripts easy and cost effective.

Summary: Best Recorder for Interviews
Sony ICD-UX560: lightweight and low profile; powers up instantly; amazing sound Continue reading…

Sony ICD-ux560 Voice Activation

Date: February 6, 2019 Author: Isaac Comments: 1 Reply

Yes. The Sony ICD-ux560 does come with a voice activation feature, though it’s labeled as Voice Operated Recording (VOR). This is a feature that I rarely used, but I’ve been looking for ways to use my Sony ICD-ux560 a lot more and decided to try it out. I’m not going to share why I decided to use the VOR feature – it’s rather embarrassing, but I was disappointed with the results.

How does voice activation feature work? The voice activated (VOR) feature enables the ux560 to automatically starts recording when a sound louder than a preset voice activation level is detected, and automatically pauses recording when the sound volume level falls. Continue reading…