Bad Quality Audio
I have one plea to anyone who is thinking about having their recorded audio transcribed. PLEASE TEST YOUR RECORDING DEVICE!!!!! If it’s not recording clearly, get newer, better, more involved equipment. I hate to see information that someone considers to be very valuable wasted because of bad audio quality. It’s also hard for me to tell someone who has put so much work into a product that the audio is beyond help and cannot be transcribed. I can sit there and charge them some inflated amount to make it worth my time, but it’s not going to make the audio any easier to hear. If I’m only catching every fifth or tenth word, what is that worth to the client?
I’m not saying this to only try to make my job easier. I’m saying this for the benefit of anyone who has worked hard on a project. Don’t waste your valuable time by using sub-par equipment. I learned this in my own little way with some minor computer problems. I was relying on my hard drive alone to save documents that I was transcribing. Well, I lost about three hours’ worth of work when my computer decided to do its nice little blue screen move. Even though I had saved the documents on the hard drive, they were lost for good. I missed a deadline and set myself back by at least a day, if not more. I finally resolved to use a flash drive and luckily have not had to worry about losing another document. All it took was a ten dollar investment.
Just a word to the wise – and this is something I’ve been hearing a lot lately – if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. I’m sure you can apply that saying to audio equipment if you try hard enough. 
Thanks for reading!
