Tips for recording focus group sessions

Whenever you record a focus group session do you always come up with a recording that is so bad that you feel like throwing it away? Capturing the focus group session in a good and clear audio is the main motive of the one who is recording it but still most the times in the end all we hear is irritating background sounds.

Thing to be taken care of…

While recording a focus group session you should take care of the physical recording environment as well as functionality of the equipment you are using to record. While choosing a venue for the focus group session background noise like traffic noise, chatters of the passers-by, sound of air conditioners, noise of scrapping the chairs by the participants, should be taken into consideration.

To minimize the effect of all these you should close the doors of the venue, request the speakers to keep unavoidable things to minimum like drinking water or answering nature’s call etc. If you are choosing a small room for the session you should also take the echo and reverberation sound into consideration and if it’s a big room then the session should be done in the corner of that room to reduce the effect of reverberation and echo because these two are most difficult to take care of, once recorded.

Quality equipment is a must!!!

The equipment which you are using to record the focus group session is also of importance. You should choose the recorder which records in the best quality possible because in recording a focus session what matters most is the quality of the recording. There are many other things to take care of like recording format i.e. in which format the recording device records best, backup power, microphones etc.

There are many companies in the market like Phillips, Olympus etc. which provide quality recording devices and microphones like DM3, DPM8000 etc. and that too at a very cheap price.

Remember, the quality of a focus group session is of utmost importance and is something on which there should be no compromise because in today’s world quantity doesn’t matter but quality does, that too big time.