{"id":416,"date":"2015-11-18T16:13:27","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T16:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcribe-this.com\/?p=416"},"modified":"2021-12-20T12:23:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T12:23:00","slug":"recording-a-focus-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcribe-this.com\/cy\/recording-a-focus-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Recording a Focus Group for Transcription Purposes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Phillips<\/a>Recording a large group of multiple speakers, for example a meeting or focus group, requires specialist recording equipment. A simple and relatively inexpensive solution is to use a purpose built conference recorder. The example pictured is a Phillips DPM8900 Conference recorder.<\/p>\n

Crucially, the kit includes several boundary microphones<\/a>, which when placed on a table, wall or other large surface, use the ‘boundary effect’ to capture a clear, phase coherent recording and they have a hemispherically shaped pick-up pattern.<\/p>\n

The microphones should be placed so that ideally, all the speakers are all equidistant from a microphone.<\/p>\n

The recording device pictured combines the signal from all the microphones and  records them to a stereo audio file. Because the relative levels of the different microphones cannot be subsequently adjusted it is important to ensure good microphone placement at the outset.<\/p>\n

(If you had a device capable of multi-track recording, then you would be able to adjust the level of each microphone channel at a later date using specialist audio editing software – but that’s a whole different ball game and quite costly!)<\/p>\n

If you’re unsure about setting the recording level, just remember that it’s much easier to correct for a signal that’s too low than too high so err on the low side. Too high a level causes clipping<\/a>, which is pretty much impossible to correct for – on our budget anyway!<\/p>\n

Some simple tips for getting good audio:<\/p>\n