atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Equipment - To Record High Quality Phone Interview

Hi,


I am an independent journalist, and soon I will be interviewing people on the telephone and then pressing and distributing CDs of the interviews.


What is a very High Quality way to record phone conversations?
I would like both sides of the conversation to be of the same high quality.


I am willing to spend up to $1,500/USD.


If anyone could help me out or direct me, that would be great!


Thanks for taking the time to read.


JennyW

Is this something your government approves of?

Actually, JennyW, if you are working from an office, some voice mail systems will allow for transfer to e-mail as wav. files. Those would make your life easy.

As for a finite answer, I am sure some of the guys with that expertise will be by soon.

Good luck.

If you got good copper lines then that's half the battle. The other half is getting the other party to NOT use their cell phone or VoIP for the interview.

So, in perfect theory, the highest fidelity interview you will receive will be in U-Law format. Still wont sound great on a CD but it's better then anything else that's out there. So look for some kind of voicemail or call recording device that records in NATIVE u-law format. If it compress' and/or process' it in any way that's not native you will potentially have a quality reduction unless it's up-sampling it (doubt it).

VoIP has better options for high-fidelity recording but they would need a laptop or computer with a softphone for this to work. It's all a compromise.

What you need is called a hybrid that in turn is connected to your choice of digital recorder. This is how broadcasters do it. You will need a microphone and headphones.

Start here for JK Audio's products. I would suggest the Broadcast Audio Host but you may see something else.

Keep in mind that the caller audio is dependent on lots of factors that are not under your control. Cell phones and VoIP have degraded telephone quality a great deal. So, many times your side of the conversation is going to sound better.

-Hal

Since telephone is only capable of a limited frequency range, 300 to 3000 Hz, the quality is always going to suffer. Quality recordings tend to be closer to the 20-20,000Hz range, the full-spectrum of human hearing.

Over the phone, it will always be "less than quality" but it is possible.

Digitized voice over an ISDN link may be better, but will not be easily accomplished.

Hi guys.

Thanks for the very helpful responses.


hbiss - thanks for that website. I'm calling them tomorrow. They have a ton of products I'm interested in and I have many questions.


Thanks so much for the lead!


JennyW

When I was doing broadcast engineering for a college radio station, we would get the occasional calls to do a "tape sync". This was where the interviewer was in another location, calling in on the phone, and the interviewee was local in our studio. We would record the interviewee locally, and overnight the tape to the interviewer. The tapes were then matched up in post-production.

The JK Audio products are good, as are the <a href="https://www.comrex.com/">Comrex</a> products. Gentner (acquired by Comrex) was another.

Found this USB device today, may suit the requirement.

https://www.nch.com.au/hardware/telephony.html