Corporate secretaries may use a disc jockey’s tool to carry out task.

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The use of a boundary microphone is well suited for a board room-

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by Art Tibaldo

In this age of multi-tasking and digital innovations, recording clerks and corporate secretaries may actually use other communication tools such as those used in recording studios to make their job easier and faster. In fact, there is now a valid reason for them to require at least two portable computers to record and document the proceedings of their board meetings and conferences. One computer can be used to record the uninterrupted audio as well as video through proper patching and connections using a web camera and the sound system of the meeting place. The second one whether it is a notepad or laptop can be assigned to key-in notes and for uploading of digital still photos that the clerk has captured.

During the 2007 OTOP National Summit which was help in Pasig City which was attended by about a thousand delegates from the various islands of the Philippines, this author was part of the team that documented the event that promotes the one-town-one-product (OTOP) and we used a designated portable computer to record the event. We used the audio recording and mastering software called Adobe Audition to record the day long summit with the computer connected to one of the audio outputs of the sound system’s mixing console. The recorded audio of the conference was later copied into disc as audio CD using the popular NERO burning software.

The 2008 first semester management conference (Mancomm) of the Department of Trade and Industry-Cordillera at the DILG office in Baguio City also saw the use of two portable PCs in recording and documenting the said event with at least two Shure wired microphones and one Audio Technica boundary microphone positioned in front of the DTI’s Regional Director. Because of this, we didn’t have to deal with the outdated analog cassette tapes that we used to flip whenever one side of its track is recorded. Additionally, the fact that in cassette recording, one has to playback, cue and rewind the tape in order to listen to and transcribe what was recorded, such is no longer a problem with digital recording since audio devices comes handy in most computers.

Adobe Audition was originally Cool Edit Pro as known by disc jockeys and production outfits several years back. Audition’s later version included pitch correction, frequency space editing, a CD project view and is also integrated with Adobe Premiere basic video editing among others.

The software is now the industry standard for digital sound recording in concerts, audio-video productions and in radio network productions where it is very much loved by announcers and DJs. One sorry fact though is that it has replaced the old multi-track recorders or MTRs and has become an imposing substitute to the LP player, cassette recorders and even CD players.

The following photos below show the various utilization of Audition and how I configured or patched it with the audio systems. You can actually connect a microphone's mini jack at the microphone-in slot at the back of your desktop (side of laptops) to the output of an audio mixer as shown in a photos below.
Audition's preset records in a waveform or wav which can be later ripped into the more popular MP3 for smaller file size but equally good audio. For ease in transcribing, one can use some of the effects to drag and delay the (pitch bender etc) voice so that it can be timed with the speed of the encoder.