Transfering Analogue to Digital

Following on from my last post about the benefits of digital transcribers over analogue, I thought this would be an appropriate next post.

If you have received an analogue file it is possible to convert it to digital.

For this you will need a couple of things:

1. A line-in or microphone jack on your computer or laptop.
2. A dictaphone capable of playing the tape.
3. A suitable recording program, ie Wavepad from NCH (http://www.nch.com.au/), or one of the many other programs that is capable of recording digital audio.
4. Lastly, and by no means least, what potentially can be the most important, and yet least expensive, peice of equipment, an audio cable that is capable of plugging into the headphone socket of the dictaphone and into the line-in/microphone port on your computer.

Once you have assembled all the items and plugged the audio cable into your computer and dictaphone you are ready to go.

The first thing to do is under the recording options of the software ensure that the recording program is using the appropriate setting for where the audio lead is plugged in. Once this is sorted, then you can press record on the recording software and press play on the dictaphone. Wtih Wavepad, as I'm sure happens with the other packages, you will be able to see the sound volume moving up and down the scale as the file is converted to digital.

Once completed, save the file. The format that you save in will have an effect on the size of the file so you might want to experiment with them to see what gives you the smallest file without loosing quality.

The file is now ready to be sent on to your transcriptionist or sub-contractor to work on.