An Overview of Voice Recording on a Memory Stick
Advantages of Digital Voice Recorders
The main advantage of digital voice recorders, apart from size, is the ease of transferring recordings to a computer to be edited and even blended with video. Also, with the correct capacity, you need not have to worry about running out of recording space in the middle of an important recording. As such, digital voice recorders have become very popular with journalists and students, who could record and play back their recordings via a computer.
Covert Voice Recording
Digital video recorders also come in handy for investigators or enforcement officers who needed voice recording for legal purposes, especially as evidence for court proceedings.
This is an area where voice recording becomes tricky. The current crop of video recorders doesn’t function efficiently for covert voice recording. Most could be considered bulky and could easily arouse suspicion, if placed near the target whose voice is to be recorded. Even if an MP3 player, which is much smaller than digital voice recorders, is used, it would arouse suspicion because many already know that such a device has the capability to record voice.
The other disadvantage of using an MP3 player is you have to fiddle with buttons to start and end recordings. If you do this before a target, you would only arouse suspicion and put the other in a `cautious’ mode.
To overcome this problem, you would want to resort to voice recording on a memory stick.
Voice Recording on a Memory Stick
A memory stick voice recorder has a main advantage over conventional digital voice recorders. It looks no different from a pen drive you use to back up your important files. There aren’t visible buttons or a blinking light (when recording) that would arouse suspicion if placed near a target.
Slide Switch
You may wonder how voice recording can be carried out without any button on the device. Well, the memory stick voice recorder makes use of a slide switch which is not easily visible as it lies on the side of the device.
All you have to do is slide the switch forward and voice recording begins in three seconds. When you’re done recording, you slide back the switch and recording stops three seconds later. The movement of the slide switch is silent and would not arouse any suspicion.
Retrieving Recordings
To retrieve your recordings, just plug the memory stick voice recorder into a spare USB port in your computer. You computer will recognize it as a storage device. No software is needed to access your recordings. An automatic folder is created by the memory stick recorder to store your recorded files. In short, you would use a memory stick voice recorder just like a pen drive.
Drawback
As useful as the voice recording on a memory stick is, it has a major drawback. There’s no battery level indicator, in keeping with the idea of resembling a pen drive. To be on the safe side, you would want to charge the device for about two hours to ensure that you have 100% battery power before starting recording.
Performance
Here’s an idea of what a memory stick voice recorder is capable of. The 8GB version of a memory stick voice recorder records up to 132 hours of audio in high quality WAV format. The recording time could go up to 18 hours and battery power can last up to 5 hours.
