Digital Recorder - advice?

Dear Pardon,

Actually that question or similar have come up a few times. The answer is this. In a pinch you can use the voice recorder on your phone. I've had to do that myself in instances where I was not really planning to do an EVP session at all. Sometimes the "Right Time" (to quote those Cialis commercials) just happens and you just know you have to start recording. In that instance, failing anything else you go right ahead and use whatever you have available.

The downside to doing that:

1) Its always best to leave a phone far away from any investigation. Turn AIRPLANE mode on so that no transmissions are happening.

2) The default voice recorder app on most phones records in 8k or 16k mode, high compression and is designed mostly just to record exactly that, your voice. So there is a great deal off loss, both in frequencies and in detail. So you may end up losing much of the valuable background noise which is usually where the EVP's lay. Or worse, the compression may insert phantom sound anomalies which could mistakenly be interpreted as EVP's.

3) Most microphones on phones are made for directional, very narrow short range pickup. So although you may hear the voice of the questioner, you will likely not pick up much of the background.

If you are in a pinch and you wish to at least be ready "In Case". I would strongly recommend finding an APP that records in high or selectable quality and also allows you to select the compression or encoding. One I use on Android is Virtual Tape Recorder. And I would always recommend saving in MP3 format, 192kbps (Prefferably 256k or greater) compression, and at least 41khz, 16bit (stereo or mono depends on the capabilities of your device).

As general practice, I would recommend not to rely on a phone to record EVP's. There are devices far more suited to that, and they're in a very affordable range.

Its the same as asking "Can I use my shoe to hammer in a nail". Sure you can in a pinch, but If you're doing some serious work I wouldn't make that your standard "Plan".

This is related, in a way...

What about using the voice recorder app on my phone?

crystalcross wrote:

Beasy wrote: ...I could hear a really high pitched whining noise, sometimes in the distance and sometimes really close. Nobody else in my group of 3 could hear anything at all...

......As a matter of fact you should be glad. Because it means out of the 4 of you, you have the best hearing left. So be glad!

Thanks CC, it's nice to know that something's still working right, whilst the rest of me is slowly falling to bits!

Yeh, I checked with the manual earlier and states that the recording format is only WMA, but I seem to have it under control now with the add-on to Audacity which allows me to import the file. Just don't like to upload programmes that I'm not sure about, just the one's that come from trusted sites and reading through the various formums on here, I would like to thank everyone here for sharing their knowledge and helping other members out.

Thanks for your help Cyrstalcross

Beasy wrote: ...I could hear a really high pitched whining noise, sometimes in the distance and sometimes really close. Nobody else in my group of 3 could hear anything at all...

Beasy,

I've seen several explanations on here, but to be honest this is a perfectly explainable and completely non-paranormal event. What you've experienced is a high frequency audio tone in the 18khz to 24khz range. This is a very special range of tones. Why? Because its in a range which is audible to animals and kids, and even younger adults. But for the most part most older individuals lose the ability to hear that frequency range.

Standard wear and tear on the ear, as well as a loss in elasticity of the ear drum, or even damage to the cilia which are the sound receptors in the ear can prevent those tones from being heard.

This is so common of an event that there has been a fad for kids to downlaod special ring tones in that frequency range and put them on their phones so that they can hear it but their parents can not. Unfortunately for them there are some adults who can hear it as well. I'm one of the lucky ones who dispite continued exposure to lound sounds as a young adult (was in a rock band) I can still hear those very high pitch tones. I drive my boss nuts sometimes because I can hear hard drives going bad when he can't hear a thing.

The source of the sound can be many. For one photographic flashes often make high pitched sounds in that range as they recharge for the next flash. This is caused by an internal oscillator connected to a transformer to charge up a capacitor in the flash unit. Alternately, older style TV's also have much the same mechanism. They have a high frequency oscillator which feeds something called a flyback transformer which sends 45,000 vots to the picture tube. This process also ends up squealing at a very high frequency.

Nothing paranormal about it. And absolutely nothing to worry about. As a matter of fact you should be glad. Because it means out of the 4 of you, you have the best hearing left. So be glad!

Ok, I was just curious because I know many of the Olympus models support MP3 encoding directly within the device. But I don't think the 400S does.

It's a WS-400S

Might I ask what model it is of an Olympus recorder?

Problem solved. I went back to the Audacity website and downloaded & installed the Ffmpeg Import/Export Library and when you open Audacity I just have to import the file and it opens ok.