Recording Telephone Conversations

Last updated: 03 July 2009
Published in: Creating new digital media |
Tags: audio | digitisation | equipment | sound recordings |

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Summary

Guidance on the principle, ethics and practice of recording telephone conversations for Remote Interviews and Oral History.

Introduction

When recording interviews and conversations for educational and research purposes, it is not always practical or even possible to have all parties in the same room. Sometimes a telephone conversation is the closest you are going to get to your subject, so here we look at the simplest ways to record a telephone call, and the legalities of doing so.

We also have a document covering the capture of recordings from the newer medium of voice calling via the internet (VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol) using software such as RTP and Skype. How to record these calls and transfer them to accessible formats is explained in Recording Skype Calls.

Clearance

For legal and ethical reasons you must not use these techniques for recording calls unless all participants are aware that they are being recorded, and have given their explicit consent for recording to take place and for the results be made available to other parties. You should keep a record of this clearance, should you be required to produce it at a later date. The simplest way to do this is to begin the recorded portion of the call by stating that you are recording the conversation, and asking your interlocutors to confirm their names, and that they have no objection to being 'on record'. Alternatively you can obtain prior written clearance by letter or email.

Though strictly speaking it is within the law to record your own phone calls without informing other parties on the call, it is illegal to play these recordings to any third party. We therefore can envisage no good reason for making such covert recordings, and we in no way advocate or condone this practice.

For full legal particulars regarding recording of telephone calls, please refer to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000).

Once clearance has been obtained, the use of all personal information which you record (and indeed personal data gathered by any means) will be further governed by the Data Protection Act (1998), which imposes strict conditions on how this data can be used. Again, make sure you are familiar with any of these conditions which apply to your project before making recordings.

Sound quality

Telephone signals delivered via conventional means are compressed in such a way that their effective audio bandwidth is greatly reduced. Signals much below 250Hz and above 3kHz are irretrievably lost in this process, leading to the classic 'telephone effect' on the voice. For this reason recording from the phone should be one of the last options you consider if sound quality is of importance to your project.

That said, we are all familiar with how much information can be imparted in a phone conversation, and as always, an imperfect record is better than none at all.

High quality audio converters, file formats etc are not realistically going to make much difference to results in this context - given the inherent limitations of telephone audio. As long as you follow basic good recording practice then even quite simple recording equipment will be sufficient for  this task. The already compromised quality will, however, be further exacerbated by additional background noise, low levels, or distortion, so still take care when setting recording input levels.

Recording from an analogue telephone

Recording both sides of a phone conversation on a traditional wired handset requires taking a feed of the signal. This can be easily achieved in two ways: firstly you can use a line splitter (the same as those used for attaching multiple phones to a single line) and connect the second output to a device to convert the copy signal into a line-level output for recording. Alternatively some devices operate by allowing you to disconnect the handset of a standard wired phone, and reconnect it through a small device designed to plug in to the phone's handset socket and pass the signal on uninterrupted, while also providing a duplicate audio output line suitable for connection to a recorder. These are a couple of such devices:

Retell 145 telephone line splitter and line level signal converter

Retell 157 telephone cord splitter and line level signal converter

Once you have a feed of the telephone signal, you can connect it to your recorder, set recording levels, and proceed as you would for any other voice recording. These type of converters will have a monophonic output, so can be plugged in to a single input of your audio interface, after which you can use your preferred audio recording software (Audacity, etc) to record and edit the call. Alternatively if you use a stand-alone audio recorder, you can connect to one of its inputs in the same way.

For step-by-step instructions on how to make a simple recording with the free Audacity application, refer to our advice document Creating an Audio Podcast.

Due to the different signals a phone cord can carry, some interfaces are not suitable for use with computer soundcards, and if this is your intention, check manufacturers' guidelines on compatibility before purchasing a converter/adaptor.

Last updated: 03 July 2009
Published in: Creating new digital media |
Tags: audio | digitisation | equipment | sound recordings |

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