You do not require sophisticated equipment, even your phone can record great audio files. Having said that, equipment does matter, especially when recording in conditions that have background noise. The following tips will help you generate the best audio/video file, which in turn will generate texts of superior quality.
Avoid heavy background noise
As far as possible, try indoor or in-studio recording, as noise editing is quite an arduous task. If you need to record outdoor, use a 'dead cat', 'wind muff' or 'windshield'. These fluffy microphone covers minimize, if not completely eliminate, wind.
Keep the microphone close from the speaker
The closer the microphone is to the speaker, the better. Enunciating the words well will ensure better sound fidelity.
Uniformity in speech
Being the sensitive devices they are, microphones can not pick sound distortions correctly. Therefore, try to maintain balance and uniformity when speaking.
Avoid Skype and phone interviews
The reason why this tip is on the list is that they typically have very low recording quality, due to the compression used in these services.
Avoid heavy accents
Our models are trained in a lot of data, but heavy accents are one of the most difficult things to transcribe!
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