General Information regarding Sound Files
DSS (Digital Standard Speech)has very high compression ratio and, although that produces small, manageable files, the resulting recording is can be of variable quality. We don't recommend this format for group interviews or situations such as focus group recordings, but it would probably be acceptable if used in dictation or one-to-one interviews in a quiet environment. DSS is a proprietory digital file format developed by Olympus. Olympus also provide the playback software. DSS files are considerably smaller than Wav files but suffer no loss of quality, and are therefore an excellent choice for swiftness of transfer and clarity. Lanier and Grundig recorders also produce dss files. Sony DVF have their own proprietory version of the dss file, producing a highly compressed recording on a much smaller file.
MP3/MPEG - a compressed WAV file often used for music. It produces a very clear recording with minimal loss of quality.
WAV is one of the more common digital file formats. It produces a superb quality sound file as it is 'lossless' but is very large - a 2 hour recording can take up around 300Mb.
WMA (Windows Media Player) can be found on all Windows-based PCs. Although it produces a much smaller file than Wav because it's considerably compressed, the sound quality can be inferior.
CDA Audio Files are standard recordings on CD and are typically the file type found on music CDs. An analogy would be that the CDA is a sort of 'sleeve' or cover file and the underlying file containing the recording itself will be in a different format, most likely Wav or some other common format. So don't look upon CDA as a recording option for your recorder. Professionally made digital recordings of conferences or lectures are frequently made as CDA files. Most transcription software will not play back CDA format, although it's possible to convert the audio file to a .WAV file by downloading CDEX_130.zip converter or by using CD Ripper.
DCT is a form of digital recording that's encrypted at the time of recording and needs to be decrypted in order to be transcribed. It's frequently used in medical transcription where confidentiality is important.
Codecs are algorithms used to reduce the number of bytes contained in large files by eliminating redundant data, thus compressing the file. The transcriber or transcription software will need access to the codec that has produced the compressed file. In effect, the recorder is producing a 'brand name' type digital file. For example, Sanyo recorders produce Sanyo .wav files and will need a Sanyo codec in order to play them back. PCs and many types of transcription software come with a variety of codecs already installed, but it would be wise to check first to ensure your digital sound file can be played. If not, most manufacturers will send out the relevant codec for a charge, or you may be able to find some way of converting the file to another format. A search online will usually resolve this.
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