Is The Dictophone Mightier Than The Pen?
The suggestion was recently made that using pen and paper to record an experience after you had it is not good enough. They suggested that it could take a few minutes to write an account of the experience in any detail and by then the event would have been processed and annalysed too much to make it a good record of the event. They suggested a dictophone should be employed so that the
The suggestion was recently made that using pen and paper to record an experience after you had it is not good enough. They suggested that it could take a few minutes to write an account of the experience in any detail and by then the event would have been processed and annalysed too much to make it a good record of the event. They suggested a dictophone should be employed so that the event could be recorded faster and hence be a more accurate account. Any thoughts?
z
I assume we’re talking vigil experiences here? A dictaphone would certainly be quicker and easier though I’m not convinced it would increase accuracy of observation. You need to organise your thoughts whether talking or writing and both can affect your memory of an event.
A dictaphone would allow you to give your thoughts DURING an experience, while you are still observing it. That could definitely be more accurate than describing it afterwards.
Yes I was referring to vigil
Yes I was referring to vigil experiences Mysteryshopper and though I agree a dictophone would be quicker, how much more accurate would it really be and with the additional cost would it justify retiring the trusty pencil case.
They are invaluable for
They are invaluable for interviews, and I imagine they would be useful on vigils too if balanced with other methods such as notes. Would everybody in a group have one? I just imagine 5 investigators all talking into their hand held machines at the same time would be a bit odd đŸ™‚ Not everybody is comfortable using them either.
Ups and downsides
An upsides is that commentary beats recall so describing something being observed would be more accurate than recalling it later. It would also mean you could remain observing instead of looking down to write and maybe missing something.
A downside is that talking into a dictaphone disturbs others and could even be mistaken for a phenomenon (if out of sight of another observer, for instance). Worse, it may influence how other people experience things if they can hear your interpretation.
If you can eliminate the downsides and keep the upsides it would be worth doing.
I think that is the sensible
I think that is the sensible way to approach it, do the pros outweigh the cons. Isn’t there a certain amount of annalysis of an experience done before deciding to document it though. For instance, you hear a rattle up the chimney, your thinking in your own mind where you think the noise has come from, what it could be, is it the wind, did anyone else hear it, all before grabbing your pen/dictophone.
Slightly off topic, but has
Slightly off topic, but has anyone doing an investigation and using a dictaphone, ever recorded EVP?
Agricola wrote:
Slightly
[quote=Agricola]Slightly off topic, but has anyone doing an investigation and using a dictaphone, ever recorded EVP?[/quote]
Most EVP is recorded just like that these days.
I think a lot of the EVP
I think a lot of the EVP related claims have been made with equipment featuring internall microphones and is possibly caused by the internal workings of the machine. This could actually be a good reason not to use a dictophone……unless you have one with an external microphone.
I’ll just chuck this in the
I’ll just chuck this in the mix, if you had a solid state recorder there would be no moving parts. Would EVP still appear ?
Lee Waterhouse wrote:
I’ll
[quote=Lee Waterhouse]I’ll just chuck this in the mix, if you had a solid state recorder there would be no moving parts. Would EVP still appear ?[/quote]
Absolutely! Most EVP originates from ambient sound not heard at the time of recording.
I read a book, either by
I read a book, either by Jurgenson or Raudive, I forget which, but I seem to recall that they thought that the EVP came from switching the recorder to tape static/white noise?
Has enough research been done to prove otherwise? Do EVP even exist, or do we just ‘join the dots’ when we hear things played back?
Glad you mentioned evp as it
Glad you mentioned evp as it goes was just lookinginto making a fully sheilded box and recording some. So solid state equipment is the key. What is the "normal proceedure" for recording evp?.
was also looking at the idea of running a study at the perceptions of the listener to the evp and to what evedince that can be garnered from that so any further reaserch can be "filtered" to remove the obvious lumps. Any thoughts/ advise? seriously I don’t care how daft it could be as I am flying blind on this one. The more information I got to work with in the first place the better the experiment will prove to be.
I’m all for science me !
Does anyone want to voluteer themselves as observers and write up reports on evp recordings? I promise (as all good scientists should do) to be an honest reporting of the data so you can make your own conclusions.
Does anyone have any evp recordings that they want to add to the study?
sorry Richard
Hi Richard – have a look
Hi Richard – have a look here and here.
okily so thats half the
okily so thats half the study already done LOL and probably to a greater depth then I could hope to acheive.
so then we move on to the oether half of the experiment removal of outside influences what have we got generally other then explainable noise and radio frequency interference?
Historical perspective..
Looking back at the history of EVP (or Pscyhophony as it was known years ago) you will find that some of the earliest reports have nothing to do with recording devices. The recording devices made it possible for one person’s work to be subsequently heard (and debated) by others. Raymond Bayless’ early work was with devices that produced audible sound in real-time. It has may even be that some early inventors may have, before recording equipment was common, heard early spirit voices.
What most all devices wherein success has been reported have one thing in common: they produce or leverage some type of random sound/noise then amplify it to generally high degrees. This is where the technical arguments start.
Most intriguing to me as a former broadcast engineer is what has come to be called Video ITC (Instrumented TransCommuncation, a term that originated in Europe in the 20th century). Video ITC evidence is much more impressive than audio ITC (and EVP) and is far more difficult to put down to random chance.
cool any links to sites
cool any links to sites containing streams ? or even write ups?
I did read a book ages back andit’s all vague to me now but it was a docunovel called the ghost of(from) 29 megacycles was about a guy that made a device that allowed him to talk to spirits from beyond the grave. If I remember rightly it involved a fish tank and two oscillators at 29mhz tuned in a certain way(he was very vague). The effect was caused by the inaccuracies of the setup I think but it was along time ago and I have had no chanceto play with it to provethe setup. wonder if that would turn out to be ITC without the t.v.
Edison and EVP/ITC
One recently hot topic is that of the potential or real contribution of Thomas Edison to the EVP and ITC technologies. This is a hotter debate than you might think. Based on some information discovered in recent years I recently completed a whitepaper on this topic.
It is being published online now. I’ll post a link in a few days when it becomes available.
I leave it to the readers to make up their own minds since, as I say in the paper, there is insufficient information at this time to offer anything more than suggestive evidence.
Edison Paper now available
Here is a link to a site in the U.S. where I posted the paper describing the history of Edison and ITC/EVP. The site is run by a medium, and we posted this in part to explain the kind of work she does. But the main text at the beginning will give you the background information I think forum readers may find interesting:
http://www.sdparanormal.com/EdisonWhitePaper.html
PhenomInvestigator
[quote=PhenomInvestigator]Here is a link to a site in the U.S. where I posted the paper describing the history of Edison and ITC/EVP. The site is run by a medium, and we posted this in part to explain the kind of work she does. But the main text at the beginning will give you the background information I think forum readers may find interesting:
http://www.sdparanormal.com/EdisonWhitePaper.html
[/quote]
Thanks for that, interesting that Edison seemed to change his sceptical stance in later life.