Will they never learn?

Okay. I could probably right a book about this after all the years in the business, but doggone it, when are these insurance companies going to learn to invest in decent equipment to do their recordings? First, it was poor-quality, low-end tape recorders. Now it's crappy digital recorders or recording software. Take your pick. The end result is that the quality of the recording is, to put it mildly, abysmal in many cases.

I seriously believe, though, that they are either oblivious to it or assume we have fancy equipment for voice recognition and cleaning up of the audio signal such as the FBI does (ever watch the TV show, "Numbers"?). At what they pay for their transcriptions, they aren't going to get that, not now, not ever. What we have are highly-trained ears, but even then, we as human beings are limited by our very nature.

Years ago, I came across this article on the Web that addresses many of the transcriptionist's concerns, http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/papers/tips.html. I wish it was required reading for anyone who dictates, whether it be electronic or tape, with the desire to have a transcript made at a future time.

The company I work for has software that it recommends to the companies, but some of the companies are obstinate and insist on using something different, usually to the detriment of recording quality. While MP3 files may be good for music, by and large when it comes to recording over the phone, it's a bad format. For some reason, it always sounds distorted as if the recording was done under water. My guess is because it's a compressed format. Believe it or not, the simple WAV file almost always comes out on top in clarity, even if it does make for a larger file size.

It all goes back to the old acronym back when I first started dinking with computers 30-plus years ago, GIGO, which stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. I'm suspecting the adjusters who send us these files that aren't clear are expecting us to do magic and use the powers of extreme discernment to clear up the parts that they themselves cannot understand when listening to the recording.

Hah. If you see a lot of [inaudible] throughout the transcript, it's not my fault, it's YOUR fault. Get a CLUE!!