What are the best tools to record a cell phone interview ?

April 17, 2018 12:33 PM

I intend to interview somebody for an article through a cell phone and wonder what are the best tools to record the conversation. I have an iPhone.
posted by Yiba to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

One is called Anchor. Another is ACR. But remember to check to see if your state is a one or two party state for telephone recordings. Otherwise, unless you tell them they're being recorded, they may record people illegally.
posted by CollectiveMind at 1:01 PM on April 17, 2018

I've used TapeACall with success.
posted by widdershins at 1:47 PM on April 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you don't mind having a physical recorder, I have used the Olympus TP-8 successfully to record calls -- it fits in your ear, and you hear the phone through the earpiece, and the earpiece is plugged in to an audio recorder which is also recording both sides of the conversation. It seems odd, but it really does work well, and it gets your voice in much higher quality than a phonecall recording service would, and it's not phone-device-dependent at all.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:00 PM on April 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Do you have a laptop? I just make the calls on speaker mode on my iPhone and record them on Quicktime on my Mac. Makes them easy to transcribe that way too.
posted by Clustercuss at 2:12 PM on April 17, 2018

I use ACR on my phone. It has worked well. The only issue I had was if your phone runs out of storage and you haven't specifically locked a file it will overwrite it. So be sure to tell the app you want to keep that file.
posted by tacodave at 2:45 PM on April 17, 2018

I asked this Q a while back and it turned out that using my laptop and Cast was the best option; in case you can try that, I've linked the question.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 2:53 PM on April 17, 2018

If I use a cell phone, I just put it on speaker and use a digital recorder, which is probably not ideal. But if you're willing to use a laptop, I use Skype with Ecamm call recorder. I use it multiple times a day and it works very well. I think they have a free 7-day trial.
posted by pinochiette at 5:28 PM on April 17, 2018

I use Tape a Call Pro for this purpose for my research work, and I'm very happy with it. It stores the call files on their cloud servers, and you can then download them when you need them: this is great for saving storage on your device, may be bothersome from a privacy perspective.
posted by faineg at 6:12 PM on April 17, 2018

If you don't care about quality, one of the easiest ways to record is to sign up for Google Voice. Have the interview subject call you, then hit the number 4. That's it! Both parties will hear, "This call is now being recorded." Download it later. It also transcribes short calls.
posted by systematize at 12:19 PM on April 18, 2018