Thread: Voice Recorder

Anyone using a digital voice recorder and if so would you change what you bought or recommend a certain product? I was looking to see if there was one that was bluetooth compatible, no luck yet.
Thank you in advance for any input and advice.

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• home inspection with voice activated recorder with headset.

Scott, I use a voice recorder for all my home inspections. The one I have lets me select up to 4 folders I believe and I can put each inspection in its' own folder. So, basically I can fit up to 4 inspections worth of blabbing on it and keep it separated. I like this idea, works good for me.

Here is the one I have, but I think I only paid $30 for it at Staples.

scott

got mine from best buy--olympus--for about $65 --records up to 5 files, but they now have recorders that you plug into your pc and it will record to file. wow why can't we cure cancer

charlie

Panasonic RR-US006



If you take multiple notes and have to be able to later review them quickly this unit can save hours of time and frustration - once in the cradle you can jump back and forth, "rewind" and "fast-forward" with ease. Also, no more fumbling with microscopic controls and indecipherable output, the cradle controls are large enough to use easily, and the internal speaker provides much clearer replay.

I don't know if Panasonic still makes these - I bought mine refurb, but they do show up on eBay from time to time.

I had a great Panasonic that crapped out after repeated use. Replaced it with a Sony which I hated. It had a delay that always cut off the beginning of what I was trying to record. I replaced the Sony with an Olympus which sounds similar to what Charlie uses. Cost is about the same and it has 5 voice file folders.

I still take plenty of pictures at my inspections but I would feel proverbally naked without my voice recorder. I find it particularly funny to listen to the exasperation and disgust in my voice when I'm inspecting a house with a lot of problems.

Voice recorders beat hand written notes by a mile.

Originally Posted by Michael Thomas

Panasonic RR-US006



If you take multiple notes and have to be able to later review them quickly this unit can save hours of time and frustration - once in the cradle you can jump back and forth, "rewind" and "fast-forward" with ease. Also, no more fumbling with microscopic controls and indecipherable output, the cradle controls are large enough to use easily, and the internal speaker provides much clearer replay.

I don't know if Panasonic still makes these - I bought mine refurb, but they do show up on eBay from time to time.

I loved my Panasonic recorder. I only bought a different make because Staples didn't have carry the Panasonics any longer.

Originally Posted by Nick Ostrowski

I had a great Panasonic that crapped out after repeated use. Replaced it with a Sony which I hated. It had a delay that always cut off the beginning of what I was trying to record. I replaced the Sony with an Olympus which sounds similar to what Charlie uses. Cost is about the same and it has 5 voice file folders.

I still take plenty of pictures at my inspections but I would feel proverbally naked without my voice recorder. I find it particularly funny to listen to the exasperation and disgust in my voice when I'm inspecting a house with a lot of problems.

Voice recorders beat hand written notes by a mile.

Nick, my wife often walks in while I'm writing up a report and listening to the playback of my recorder, and she says the same thing. She calls it my pure disgust voice!!

Add to this conversation the "Naturally Speaking Dragon" program for your computer and wham-O your inspection gets cut in half! (almost) Been doing it for years, always worked for me.

Nuance - Dragon NaturallySpeaking Speech Recognition Software

I got the Dragon Naturally Speaking software program Brian and it drove me up a wall. I can type fairly well and with decent speed but I didn't know what to expect from it. It often mispelled some of the same words over and over regardless of how much I tried to train it. It is a very neat product but I went back to manual typing as it was just too aggravating for me.

Here's what I did to get DNS up to near perfect report-writing accuracy:

1) Start with new user, and select the creation of a empty dictionary.

2) Have it "read" the directory containing your completed reports (you now have a dictionary which contains ONLY the words you use in your reports, and DNS will never substitute "lentil" for "lintel" ).

3) Start dictating, and whenever DNS confuses two words,"train" both of them, or if one is very uncommon, delete it.

4) Whenever you encounter homonyms, or words which just seem to give DNS problems, use the command browser to set up a "command" for each, for example:

"grammar whether or not" inserts "whether"
"grammar atmospheric" inserts "weather"

"grammar" is just the "tag" I use for to identify such commands, you can call them anything you want and also create multiple tags, for example I use a "smarttext" tag to identify text to insert into Homeguage report temples, ex:

"smarttext cardinal direction" inserts "*identify(cardinal-direction)*"

5) Do the same to control capitalization:

"grammar lower southeast"

6) BACK UP your vocabulary regularly using the "export", as you will eventually have a *lot* of time invested in building it.

------------

Hint: Half the power of DNS in in the command browser, as you can "program" DNS to insert *any* type or amount of "canned" text or graphics with a short voice command.

Originally Posted by Ian Niquette

but I think I only paid $30 for it at Staples.

WOW! THAT'S A LOW PRICE!

I have three Panasonics.

4 folders...can download to file all that good stuff.

What I liked the most is the one button record/stop record and that the button is easy to press but not easily pressed by accident when it is in my belt.

I make very heavy use of my voice recorder, but I also try and take a picture of every serious defect - I live in terror of the day when I get back to the office and discover the voice recorder was not recording (I have trained myself watch for the red recording light to go on, so hopefully this is never going to happen.)

With the pictures for big dollar or potential high liability defects I may fail to report an inoperative stopper at a sink drain if the recorder has failed, but nothing more serious.

I did once once accidentally erase a folder for one inspection on a multiple inspection day - had to go back with my tail between my legs and perform a reinspection just to be certain - fortunately it was a vacant property, and I'm on pretty good terms with the listing broker.

Interestingly (and somewhat encouragingly) I did not detect any significant defects on the second visit I've missed on the first.

I'm niow getting interested in the better and better mini video recorder units being introduced on a seemingly weekly basis - in a pinch with one of those, making a voice note of each defect, I could reconstruct an entire inspection if necessary.

The really hot setup would be a way to mark each item on such recording so you could just fast forward through them and use the result as a combination video/voice recorder - I would still take higher resolution pictures of many defects, but if you instantly jump to the next marked item such as setup could really be the cats meow for "walking back through" an inspection as you created the report.