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…they speak in this range, but assuming that must do so is unwise. Recall that ghosts lack the vocal organs used by living people, and it may be that when they choose to speak, they do so at a pitch
well-beyond the range of human hearing. There is even evidence for this: domestic pets responding
dramatically to some inaudible (to humans) sound. You may be asking, “Okay, but if the recorder
can hear and record a sound that is beyond the range of my hearing, how will I know it?” You will
use audio processing software to adjust the pitch of the recording to bring sounds within the range
of your hearing that otherwise are not; but that is the subject of another article.
File Format. Many modern recorders will save in mp3 format. There are usually good reasons for
this, but it can complicate our job. The mp3 format is a compressed format; that is, it actually lowers the quality of a recording to reduce the total size of the file. This is fine in a conference room or
lecture hall, when recording a trained speaker in an otherwise quiet environment, but can make the
difference between a word being intelligible or not, when softly whispered.
Preferable are uncompressed formats, such as
the .wav format – every nuance that the recorder “hears” is saved into the file. Many older
recorders ONLY recorded in uncompressed formats, but more modern ones will often give us
a choice, with mp3 being the default format.
This is a setting I recommend changing to the
uncompressed format. The file size for an uncompressed recording can be enormous, sometimes as much as ten or twenty times the size
of the mp3 version of the same recording, and
manipulating as 12 hour long (overnight) .wav
file in audio processing software can be daunting, but just remember this: an mp3 file that
occupies only 5% or 10% of the space contains
only 5% to 10% as much audio data as the uncompressed .wav file of the same recording.
When the time comes to filter background
noise from a whispered answer to an important
question, you may find yourself wishing you
were working with an uncompressed file.
Proprietary Software. Avoid recorders requiring
proprietary software to transfer files to a computer, but look instead for those with “plug and
play” capability. The laptop should recognize
and access the recorder with the same ease it
would a flash drive.
One of the most infuriating limitations of many
digital recorders is their manufacturer’s unwillingness to let us access our own recordings unless we install the manufacturer’s software. To
their credit, manufacturers may include some
useful editing features in their proprietary software, but I have found it is often more trouble
than it is worth.
I had an older digital recorder that worked fine
with the proprietary software until my laptop
crashed. When I upgraded to a new laptop with
a newer version of Windows, the old recorder’s
software would not run on it; in fact, I was unable even to install it.
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