How to Choose a Digital Voice Recorder

When it comes to electronic shopping, you start out with an idea, wade through millions of different options and models and end up with something you don't quite understand why you brought it in the first place. And this scenario happens with most gadgets, let them be tablet PCs and laptops or wireless headphones. What about the simple voice recorder? What started out as a box-like recording machine is now a pen or lighter-sized device, that can record audio and store it in a digital format. But in the sea of brands, prices and tech specs, how to choose a digital voice recorder that best suits your recording needs? Let's find out...

How to Select a Digital Voice Recorder?
To choose the best digital voice recorder, you need to be well-versed with what tech features the best voice recorder should possess. Below are some factors of a voice recorder that you should check out:

Recording Time and Quality
There is a hidden catch with recording quality, the longer you get to record something, the lower the audio quality. So if you record a 15 minute speech, the quality subsequently is very low. On the other hand, a 3 minute dialog can be recorded and played back at a very high quality. So the face-off is quality vs. quantity and the result is based on your needs. If you want long recordings and can do with low quality audio, then opt for longer recording duration. But if your recordings need to be used in meetings, presentations and products, and you cannot use low quality audio, then look for the longest recording duration with sound quality. Even transcribing audio-to-text requires a good recording quality. Some recorders allow you to select the level of recording quality, so you can fluctuate between high and low-level recording ability as needed. To increase the quality of your recordings, buy a recorder with an external microphone jack, so you can connect a microphone to the recorder and pick up high quality audio. For large gatherings and meetings, where a lot of noise is present, a microphone can enhance the recording's quality.

How Does a Water Jet Cutter Work?

Water jet cutters may be still alien to many of us. To me it wasn't known until a few weeks ago, when a telly series on cutting metal and other substances amazed me. Along with high-end cutting machines with razor-sharp cutting technologies, it surprised me when they showed something as liquid as water being used to cut the hardest of substances. Now this is some technology and after this I truly believed in the capacities of engineering and the human mind. Using water pressure to cut substances, was roughly practiced during the mid 1800's. But the concrete concept of using water pressure as a cutting tool was discovered by Dr. Norman Franz, who was an engineer in forestry, in the year 1950. This was founded as an attempt to find new options to cut trees. He studied the technology of 'ultra high water pressure' (UHP) to be used as a cutting tool. Later to cut high-end solid substances, abrasives were added with the stream of water, which would let them cut even metals, with ease. With advancements today, the water jet cutter has been used in many sectors for cutting, drilling and milling. With water jet cutters being a revolutionary tool in the industrial sector, a little insight into its work mechanism will be interesting.

How to Use a Digital Voice Recorder

The phonograph was the first instrument which was used for sound recording. It was used mainly for studying languages. The voice of the native speakers of a language was recorded and other non-native people learned the language and the pronunciation using the recorded voice. After some years, cassette recorder was used to record voices, though with low sound quality. Later, after the advent of digital voice recorders, voices are being recorded with better sound quality, file sharing and with more convenience in usage. 
Digital Voice RecorderA digital voice recorder, functions almost same as that of a tape recorder, except that, it doesn't have a tape. As the recording and listening process is easy and quick, it is widely used by students, interviewers, academicians, journalists, etc., to record their voices and re-record them if they choose to. Digital voice files are incorporated to record the voice data. In a digital voice recorder, the voice data is stored in the form of discrete numbers, and the value depends on the air pressure involved during the voice modulations. But the input is a continuous stream of analog data. The analog signal is converted into digital signal by Analog-to Digital Converter (ADC). The output of the ADC is in the form of stream data consisting of 0s and 1s, which is stored in the memory and later converted to analog data. It is important to convert the digital data into analog data, because, we can hear only analog signals. 
How to Use a Digital Voice Recorder
The digital voice recorder is a device which looks like a USB device, that records voice data. The three main components of a digital voice recorder are:

    Microphone , to capture the sound waves
    Amplifier, to amplify the incoming data
    Recording Device, to record the voice data

Components Used in the Digital Voice Recorder
Now, you need to familiarize yourself with the buttons present in the digital voice recorder. Some of the commonly used buttons are play, stop, record, forward and rewind, menu. Some versions of the digital voice recorder, can also have some buttons combined, such as play/pause or record/stop.
    Identify some other components such as microphone, USB, headphone jack, speaker, in your device.
    The screen of the digital voice recorder will display the recording time left, indicator to show the recording process, location of the data file, battery life, etc.

Process of Recording the Voice
Choose, the location of the file, where you want to save it from the folders in the menu.
    After choosing the file location, press the record button and start recording your voice through the microphone.
    Ensure that the indicator in the display screen of your recorder, indicates the recording process.
    Now you can go back to the file location and listen to the voice recorded, by pressing the play button.
    By pressing the forward and rewind keys, you can control the action. You can also increase and decrease the volume by pressing the '+' and '-' buttons, respectively.

Salt Crystals - Recipe

Minerals are formed of tiny particles known as atoms. These atoms in most minerals have recurring pattern and follow a three-dimensional pattern. Due to this, a mineral has the ability to form in to a normal crystal with flat sides. Certain crystals have the ability to develop into cubes, while others develop into crystals with more than two sides. The latter is known as a prism.
Crystals can be easily grown at home using basic ingredients. Salt, sugar and alum crystals are often made at home. The basics for all of these materials remains same, where in you need to let the chemical dissolve in water and let the water evaporate or cool the solution which will automatically crystallize the substance. Before learning how to grow salt crystals using salt crystal recipes, let us look at some more information on salt crystals.

How to Distinguish Between Crystal and Glass

The fundamental idea is that, all crystals are glasses but all glasses are not crystals. The uses of glasses and crystals are numerous. We use crystal wares and glass wares in our houses, mostly for decorative purposes. Different types of spectacle glasses are widely used in our day-to-day life and we can even make jewelry out of crystals. Now, when we look into the differences between glass and crystal, some differences are visible to the naked eye and some can be found through experiments only. But before knowing how to identify glass from crystals, it is necessary to understand what is a glass and what is a crystal. Let's analyze it.