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RecAll-PRO, the Ultimate
Virtual Recording Device for DXing
by Guido
Schotmans
A few weeks ago, a very interesting
article about "Emerging Techniques of High-Tech
DXpeditioning" was published on DXing.info.
Although a lot of information was new to me, and
very useful in my DX-activities, I was surprised
to hear that the authors were not aware of a virtual
recorder equipped with time-stamping.
RecAll-PRO is a tiny little recorder
that continuously time and date stamps recordings.
You can download it at http://www.sagebrush.com
When a recording is played back,
the day, date and time will be added to the screen.
So this is really the solution for those of us writing
down the recording data on a small piece of paper
that often is lost afterwards. But there is more!
It is possible to add annotations that describe
what's recorded at that moment. I do it this way:
at the beginning of the recording, I add annotation
mentioning the frequency and when already known,
the station's name. But it is even possible to add
extra annotation with some program details like
"ID"; "News" etc. That makes
is very easy to find a certain sequence back.
Furthermore RecAll-Pro has a
feature called Vox (voice-activation). This adjusts
the sound level intensity at which recording begins.
That means that you don't have to struggle with
setting the times of both the receiver and once
again that of the recorder. RecAll-Pro records only
when there is audio available at the line-in and
stops when there is no audio. It is also possible
to activate settings to start a new file every time
when there is audio available again and file names
can have a date prefix if you want.
You can choose between many WAV
and MP3 audio formats. Ogg Vorbis format will be
added in the near future. For DXing it isn't necessary
to choose the large file-size formats. Depending
on what you will do afterwards you have to consider
your choice. Most of the time, I'm using MPEG Layer-3,
8kBits/s., 11025 Hz sample rate mono Wav's. (this
option is using 0.057 MB of disk space/min), or
MP3 files with MPEG Layer-3, 16kBits/s., 16000 Hz
sample rate mono compression.
Worth mentioning is that the
creator of this piece of software has an open mind
for improvements. Guy Atkins suggested adding an
option to activate a date and time shift from the
PC's clock. That would make it possible to have
the date/time stamping in UTC instead of your local
PC time. And also his suggestion to add keyboard
shortcuts or hotkeys for annotations and selection
marks was also welcomed.
RecAll-PRO costs $29.95 US. There's
also the non-pro version but I recommend the pro
while this is more stable and it has more features.
Both versions can be tested during
15 real use days (not calendar days) and further
also the next 15 calendar days after the 15th usage
day.
Published
on January 30, 2003
  
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