Expanded sections for screen readers

Why doesn’t Audio Notetaker transcribe what is being said? Surely that would be much more useful?

A good question! The truth is, members of the team at Sonocent are actually world experts in speech recognition. It is because speech recognition doesn’t work well enough that we decided to create Audio Notetaker – to make audio as easy to use as text. Now I know what you’re thinking, you’ve seen speech recognition that works, so why are we saying it doesn’t? With a headset, speech recognition actually works reasonably well. However, with free speech it works badly and with distance recording it also works badly. With distance recording and free speech it works very badly. This is why Audio Notetaker is great for meetings, interviews, lectures and any other sort of ambient recording.
You also need to think, what is it you wanted the transcript for anyway? The transcript is a way of getting to the parts you need to revisit or remember quickly, but it’s not the only way and it’s certainly not the best way. Written information is quite different to spoken information, and it is much better to keep the information in spoken form. Audio Notetaker makes navigating, annotating and organising audio effortless.

What hardware do I need to make recordings with Audio Notetaker?

You can either use a digital recorder, or record live on your PC. If your PC is a laptop, it may have a built-in microphone – try this first. If you don’t think it’s good enough, you can get an excellent plug-in microphone very cheaply from Maplin, but this may still not sound very good as the very cheapest laptops and almost all netbooks have very poor quality audio input. In this case, you will need to splash out on a USB microphone like the Samson Go Microphone, which will give excellent quality on any PC.

What digital recording devices do you recommend?

Audio Notetaker v2.5 onwards supports mp3, m4a, wma, wav and also some video formats such as mov and mp4. This means that you can import audio files from most digital recorders, including smartpens. Just make sure it has been made for distance recording and records in a supported format.

We have special support for the Sony T-mark system and Olympus index system – we’ll read these marks as section breaks when the audio file is imported into Audio Notetaker. Whereas Olympus digital recorders offer slightly better quality, the Sony recorders allow up to 98 index marks (compared to Olympus’s 16) and for this reason we’d strongly recommend users go for a Sony recorder, such as the Sony ICD-SX712 or ICD-AX412F.

How do I easily access Audio Notetaker files that I have been using recently?

You can view all of the Audio Notetaker files on your computer by opening the Notes Files Manager (Manage -> View Audio Notes). This will search folders which you’ve opened Audio Notetaker files from and saved Audio Notetaker files to. As the files can be viewed in date order, you can easily find files that you have been using recently.

Is it possible to export all of the sections I have created as individual audio files?

If you would like to create individual audio files for each of your sections, then you can export your audio as an album (File -> Export -> Audio As Album…). This makes it very easy to listen to your Audio Notetaker file on a digital music player (such as an iPod, mp3 player or mobile phone). Each section will be created as a separate track, with the corresponding text in the notes pane becoming the title of the track. Any images will be imbedded into the file also, and will be displayed if your music player supports album art.

I can’t remember which file contained the information I am looking for. What can I do?

Audio Notetaker has a Find in Files tool (Manage -> Find in Files). This will open a new tab from where you can search for key words inside Audio Notetaker files. The search will look for matches from within the notes pane and Powerpoint slides imported into the images pane. This means that if your Audio Notetaker files contain Powerpoint slides, then the search will return matches from inside those Powerpoint slides too, which is very handy if you forgot to make any notes!

How do I export my audio files as mp3s?

Unfortunately, at this time only files that were imported in the mp3 format can be exported as mp3. If you would like to export your wma files as something other than wma, then you are able to save as wav although the files in this format are much larger as they are not compressed. If you export audio files as wav then you can convert them to mp3 using a wav to mp3 converter, which you can download from the internet; a Google search will yield many results. Switch Audio Converter software is free and better than most – download it here

I have highlighted important segments and sections and want to save them separately in a new file. Is there an easy way to do this?

Yes, you can extract all highlighted sections and/or marked segments with just a click of a button! Just go to Edit -> Extract -> Highlighted Sections/Marked Segments and choose which (if not all) colours you would like to extract. These will then be put into a new file in a new tab, ready for you to edit and/or save.

I’m not a fan of the look of Audio Notetaker. The yellow background is, quite frankly, a bit sickly and the bars are too small and close together. Can you change this for the next version please?

We’re not going to change it, but you can! From the Options Menu (Tools -> Options…) you can customise everything about the look of Audio Notetaker; from the default colours of the background, audio bars and text, to the size, spacing and scaling of the audio bars. Create the look that you are most happy with and that you find easiest to use.

When I export the image and text, the formatting is all wrong. I want the image on the left and the corresponding text on the right, not the text underneath. What can I do?

When exporting the image and notes panes in the Rich Text Format (.rtf) there are limited options available for formatting before the file is saved. You can edit the file in a text editor such as Word afterwards. However, the print option formats the page similarly to the display of Audio Notetaker, with the image on the left and the text on the right. You can print to pdf using a free pdf printer (a quick Google search will return some results) and this will enable you to send your images and notes to others via email, without changing the formatting.

I have created some Audio Notetaker files that I would like to give to some friends who don’t own Audio Notetaker. Is there any way they can view the files without buying the software?

You can share the Audio Notetaker files that you create with others using the Rich Audio Viewer. This can be downloaded for free from the Audio Notetaker website. The Rich Audio Viewer allows you to view, but not edit, Audio Notetaker files.

I am having trouble activating my copy of Audio Notetaker. What should I do?

Firstly, check that you are connected to the internet. Your computer needs to connect to our license servers in order to activate your copy of Audio Notetaker. If you are still having trouble, please contact us at:
support@audionotetaker.com

FAQ