Last week’s App Smart topic was audio recording apps that can turn your smartphone or tablet into a digital voice recorder handy for business or personal use, and that even audio professionals may find useful.
There are many of these apps available in the different smartphone app stores.
One very simple iOS app is iTalk Recorder (free on iTunes). The recording interface centers around a very large red button to start a recording. From the menu bar above the recording section you can edit the file name you want for each recording. This is where you can also select the recording quality from “good†through “better†to “best†â€" bearing in mind what purpose you need each recording for, and that higher quality files take up much more space in your device’s memory.
Audio recordings are displayed in the app as a list, and there’s a promnent search box that will be useful for finding the file you need if you record many audio sessions. You can even add notes to files by tapping on them. Buying the “premium†version of the app (for $2 in iTunes) removes ads from inside the app and adds the ability to record in the background. This feature may be handy if you find yourself needing to Google a fact during an interview, for example. The paid-for app also includes the ability to email bigger files and share quickly through the separate cloud-based Dropbox and Soundcloud file storage systems.
An alternative free iOS app I’ve used a lot in the past is Quick Voice Recorder. This app is useful because of its extremely straightforward design, which basically has all the app’s controls for recording audio, listing and playing previous recordings, and editing a recording’s title on a single page. As a journalist who needs to record interviews I find its simplicity a bonus because it doesn’t distract me while I’m chatting. It! ’s not among the most sophisticated audio recording apps, but it is free.
Similarly on the Android platform the free app PCM Recorder is an extremely unfussy audio recorder that records in the high quality PCM audio format. The app is also basically a single-page design. This means that recordings are simple to make or playback, and it’s easy to glance through your list of previous recordings. It’s also very straightforward to adjust the file name of a recording to jog your memory about its contents â€" perhaps the subject of the meeting you’re having at work, and so on.
Quick call
Outfit 7 makes very popular interactive character apps that will amuse your children, and there is a new free Android app, Talking Angela, in the series. Angela is a cute cat who reacts with different animations if you pat her image, and you can even chat to her in English about a variety of topics â€" and listen to her chat back to you.
