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Dictation equipments are the devices used to record lectures, notes, interviews, meetings and so on. Record keeping and document creation has become much easier with the usage of dictation equipments. Doctors and other health care professionals widely use this equipment to record quick and accurate patient information.

Earlier, cassette tape was the preferred choice of dictation equipment. However, the usage of cassette is not very convenient. Any changes to the existing information cannot be made without recording over the previously recorded massage and also the cassette tape has to be physically taken from the doctor’s office to the transcriptionist’s office to convert the dictation into a document. This is a very tedious and time consuming process.

Micro cassette came into market as an advancement of regular cassette. Micro cassette is 50% smaller than the regular ones and is cost effective. They are affordable and compact solution for dictating, recording meetings and so on. Micro cassette recorders are available with various features such as voice activation, indexing, auto reverse and plug-in for additional accessories.

Indexing is an important feature which enables the user to physically mark a spot on the tape. This helps the transcriptionists to locate a particular message. Voice activation makes it possible to the recorder to start automatically and also stops when there is a pause or period of silence in the dictation. Voice activation helps to save the tape space and battery life. Auto reverse feature is useful in long dictation sessions, as the user does not have to flip the cassette manually.

The latest technology in the dictation equipment field is the digital dictation equipment. This is a hand held device which can be carried along with the user. This feature makes it highly popular among people who are on the move such as business people, doctors and also in the hospitals. Digital voice recorders offer 20 or more hours of recording and hence are ideal for heavy dictation recorders.  The recorded dictation can be transferred to a computer. Once the dictation is transferred, the contents of the digital voice recorder can be deleted because the transferred dictation can be edited in the PC itself. The downloaded dictation is always in a small file format, which can be easily emailed to the transcription service to convert it into a document.

Digital voice recorders are available in various styles and types and with wide range of prices. Typical digital voice recorders have the capacity of holding ninety minutes to twenty two hours of recording time. However, longer recording time results in a lesser quality of the recorded sound. All digital dictation equipments can store the recorded dictation. They have folders to store the voice recordings, which can be easily retrieved. Each folder can hold up to 99 messages or more. Some of the advanced digital voice recorders even have Schedule folders, which enables to store the recordings date wise. Depending on the usage one can select the digital dictation equipment. Even though digital voice recorders are expensive when compared to the regular cassette and micro cassette, their efficiency and time saving features makes it worth spending extra bucks.

A high quality digital voice file can be used in conjunction with speech recognition software. While using a speech to text software, computer uses its computational ability to select the word with the highest probability of occurrence to make a text file. With the use of speech to text software, it is possible to finish the whole process of transcription in couple of hours such as recording the digital voice, transferring the file over the internet and receiving the completed document.

Most people can talk faster than writing. The dictation equipments, which work on this logic, have helped the businesses to save their precious time and thus aid in increased productivity.