KNOW YOUR TECH!
(standard recording), HQ (high quality), and
XQ (extra high quality). Stereo recorders or
those that can record either stereo or mono
will insert an S in these settings (SXQ for instance) to designate that this is a stereo setting.
Sensitivity. This is a measure of how “quiet”
a sound can be and still captured by the recorder’s microphone. It will be expressed in
decibels in the recorder’s technical specifications, and you should look for the largest
negative number. In practice, most modern
recorders come with pre-set levels through
which you can scroll to select your desired
sensitivity, but the menu will not give you the
setting in decibels; rather, it will express sensitivity in terms like Meeting and Lecture.
Lecture is usually the setting with the highest sensitivity.
- by Patrick B. Bishop
A good audio recorder is an indispensable
tool for the paranormal investigator. It is
the one technological interface between this
world and the next that permits a strong
spirit to convey real information to us. Unlike other devices such as ghost boxes and
voxes, spirits are not required to interact
with the technology to communicate (which
I personally suspect adds a level of complexity to the process that may lower the
validity of results). Faced with an audio
recorder, all a spirit need do is speak, and
through this simple interface, we can learn
names, dates, causes of death, and other
bits of data that can sometimes be verified
against historical records.
Noisefloor. This is a measure of how much
noise the recorder generates itself. By noise, I
mean the internal electronic interference that
translates as sound during playback. What
we are looking for is the recorder with the
lowest possible noisefloor, usually expressed
in decibels. Since the phenomena we are attempting to record are often very subtle, the
lower the noise generated by the recorder itself, th H[ܙH