Record Your Voice For Fun and Profit!

Recently I took a car trip from New York City (my home) to Michigan (my birthplace.) For those who’ve never made the trip, it takes 10 hours if you don’t hit traffic or stop too much – and I was travelling by myself. I use to pack books-on-tape and plenty of CDs to fill the time. Last year I got a Palm Tungsten T5 that can play back MP3s in addition to all the regular PDA functions. The trick now is to pick a good selection of stuff to listen to and load it onto the T5.

I’ve got a few favorite CDs ripped to the T5 already (Pink Floyd’s PULSE, William Shatner’s Has Been, Kid Rock’s Cocky, and Tool’s Undertow) but I wanted to listen to some podcasts – I wanted to listen to people talking about stuff without surfing AM radio. So I started looking around Odeo.com looking for something to download.

My website work has been high on my mind for a while now, so I started looking for some marketing and promotion podcasts. I looked up Yaro Starak, and downloaded some of his podcasts. He’s got a very interesting blog called Entrepreneur’s Journey that I’ve been following for a while now. I also came across a podcast from a website called Savvy Solo Cast that was an interview with James Maduk about creating info products. James advocates recording everything you do and generating media assets that you can publish and sell. This got me thinking about recording some of my own thoughts.

Inspiration Strikes

My plan is to make audio recording a habit. When someone asks a question concerning a subject I have a special knowledge about (like why junk mail with a hand written address is more likely to get opened than junk mail with a printed label) I’ll pop out the recorder as I give my response and then type up the results for a blog posting or other such use. Or, when I meet someone interesting and have a conversation that I think others might enjoy, I’ll pop out the recorder and ask for permission to record the discussion. It’ll be like having a giant net that I can drag through my world and catch ideas and insights. Then I can look for ways to package and distribute them to others.

My Voice Recorder Problem

I got excited thinking of all of the ways I could utilize this approach and was inspired to dictate a couple of articles for this website, but the old microcassette recorder I had brought along with me died. I hooked my laptop to a headset and fired up the free Audacity audio recording software I installed then captured my notes. This was a very cumbersome setup not well suited for making a simple voice recording (and not safe to manage while driving.) If I expected to be able to make voice recordings at a moment’s notice I was going to need an easier solution.

Finding the Right Recorder

I decided to start looking for a digital voice recorder that would accept a microphone input and – here’s the kicker – not cost me a small fortune. I also didn’t want to have to carry around adapters and add-on gear that is often required to make an MP3 player record from a mike.

My T5’s single worst design flaw is that Palm removed the voice recording feature that was part of earlier models. But, even if it did record voices, having to navigate through screen options to make a recording isn’t a good solution when you are driving down the road. I wanted something small, sleek, high quality, and easy to use and navigate with one hand. So, the hunt was on.

A stop at the local CompUSA gave me a chance to look at several different options up close. As I guessed, most of the MP3 players that recorded audio used a built-in mike and didn’t have a place to plug an exteral mike in. They also had the negative of interfaces designed for playback and not recording. The better suited models were way more pricey than I was prepared to spend. The DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) style units seemed most appropriate.

I found the Olympus VN-960PC model and was ready to part with cash. It’s small, nicely laid out, has a mike and headphone jack on top, and claims to have enough storage space for hours of HQ recordings. My only concern was the recording format and quality settings it used. The store staff gave me blank stares when I asked, and the 5 bullet points on the sales sign didn’t address the issue. I wrote down the model number in my T5, went back to work, and looked it up online.

My Audio Recording Solution

After reading reviews and searching out every different make and model of DVR, I came back to this one. It records almost 6 hours of audio in a 16 kHz sample rate WAV file. Nearly every review said that the sound quality was excellent, so I hope that the recordings will sound good enough to sell. When the recorder arrives I’ll post a review about my experiences with it.

Happy Audio Recording,

The Go-To Guy