The Natural Philosopher wrote:

... quality only need be good enough to be able top prepare transcriptions
by a competent audio typist and to clearly ID what was said.

Any recommendations?

No, because I don't know the capabilities of such machines.

I think you need to consider how & where it will be used. Is it, eg, to sit
in the centre of a conference table and hear everything going on around it?
Will everyone speak loud enough and clearly enough? Will people talk at the
same time? Will some people be much further away from it than others?

I would think the quality of the microphone(s) on the unit and their level
of directionality will matter. A machine designed for recording music etc
in stereo will possibly not cope well with people sitting all around it.
You'd really need omnidirectional mics for that.

On the other hand if it's for a small group of people in a small room, where
everyone speaks clearly etc then even a directional mic facing the wrong way
may be more than adequate.

Whereas when recording music etc one generally wants a system capable of
accurately recording a big dynamic range (ie able to differentiate between
very soft and very loud sounds), for your use you might want the machine to
'iron out' such differences. I'd imagine that transcribing audio is much
easier if the speakers' volumes are all more or less the same. So you maybe
need to look for a device designed to support that. I don't know what it
would be called, these days - maybe "automatic levels" or some such.


--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

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