Remember pocket voice recorders, and their fiddly (but cute) miniature cassette tapes that stored your business memos and interviews? These gadgets have largely gone the way of the dodo, because digital voice recorders replaced them. Digital recorders don't need the tiny tapes, they can record with less audio distortion and they offer extras like easy downloading of your recordings to a computer.
But nowadays even digital voice recorders are at risk of extinction because smartphone apps can do many of the same tasks.
Voice Recorder HD
One of the most highly regarded voice recorder apps is Voice Recorder HD by eFusion. It is a $2 iOS app (also a $2 app for Samsung Android tablets). Its maker says it appeals to business users and even sound professionals. The app is graphically sophisticated and its interface is stripped down to the minimal components you need for recording sound.
Where the app excels is in its subtleties — such as its audio volume meter that displays the maximum volume recorded recently, and the app's main graphical display, which is a big image of a microphone, flashes red to remind you that you are in the middle of a recording. The Voice Recorder HD app does fail on a couple of fronts. For example, audio file trimming functions cost an extra $1 to buy via an iTunes in-app purchase.
Ausio Memos
A similar app, Audio Memos, costs just $1 in the iTunes store. This app is even graphically simpler than Voice Recorder HD. Its main interface is a list of your previous recordings with a control bar at the bottom containing a large "record" button and access to the app's settings.
Despite its less eye-catching design, the app does have powerful features. These include the ability to record in the background while using other apps, and to connect to a Bluetooth microphone.
One of the difficulties of recording sound is that at times volume can either be too quiet or too loud, but this app has adjustable amplification so you can adapt it to deal with varying volume during recording.
Easy Voice Recording
For Android devices, the app Easy Voice Recording (free on Google Play) is an unfussy yet full-featured option. The app is split into two sections: recorder and player.
The recording section has large touch controls to start, stop and pause a recording and has a neat graphical trace demonstrating the volume of recently recorded sounds. From this part of the app you can also edit the file name of a recording, share it over Bluetooth or e-mail , and have access to the many settings.
These settings include the ability to turn on or off a hiss reduction system and adjust the audio file format and recording quality (from below "telephone quality" all the way up to "CD quality").
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