Digital Reporting Equipment, Software, and Recording Practice
The signal chain and what breaks it
A digital reporting rig is only as strong as its weakest link: microphone, gain stage, analog-to-digital converter, storage, backup. Boundary microphones suit a fixed courtroom; cardioid or shotgun microphones reach a soft-spoken witness; lavaliers help in depositions and multi-speaker settings. Know the difference between a lossless master (WAV, typically 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz at 16- or 24-bit) and a compressed derivative (MP3/AAC); the compressed copy is never the official record. Set gain manually rather than trusting automatic gain control, and aim for peaks near -12 to -6 dBFS so a cough or a raised voice does not clip into distortion.
Practice habits examiners test
Announce the case, date, time, and participants on the record, then stop and verify: meters moving, file writing, headphones live, second channel or backup device running, batteries and media healthy. Keep timestamped log notes tracking speaker names, exhibit markings, and off-record periods, because a timestamp is what lets you find a disputed passage months later. Annotation software and speech-recognition drafts speed production, but a draft is never the product: every word must be checked against the audio.
Common traps: assuming a file saved because the screen said "recording"; trusting auto-transcription; failing to identify a new speaker by name; skipping the post-session backup check.
Rule of thumb: record, verify, then proceed. Nothing moves forward until you have confirmed the file exists and the levels are healthy.
Worked example: a witness's voice drops and you cannot re-ask. Note the timecode, confirm the second channel is hotter, and flag the passage in your log rather than boosting gain mid-answer and pulling up room noise.