Notes on audio notetaking

One of the features I find tremendously compelling in OneNote is its ability to record and synchronize audio (and now video with SP1) with my note taking. It’s a really slick feature to demo. In practice, I’ve run into a couple snags.

The biggest problem is capturing high enough quality audio. I’ve been relying upon the built in mics and the quality of the audio they capture isn’t so great. A remote and/or wireless mic would help. At least that way the mic could be placed close to the speaker, so I could capture better audio. Of course, a mic connected point-to-point with my Tablet would work fine for me, but what about the other people wanting to record on their Tablets? Would everyone need to provide their own wireless or wired microphones?

Actually, as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I think an alternative, stream-based approach is a good solution. I’d like to see audio digitized and streamed onto local or ad hoc networks. That way rather than simply an analog wireless or over-the-air mic, I’d like to see digital mics that publish in real-time the audio stream onto a LAN so I can record it. The available streams would appear within OneNote from which I could pick and then record. This would be quite useful at planned speaking events, such as in conference sessions, for instance. The normal analog signal could be hooked up to the stage speakers, but I’d like to see simultaneous LAN-based audio webcasts that I could attach to from within my note taking app. The result would be that I could record better quality audio. Of course it would be just as useful to record Internet-based webcasts. I’d like to see OneNote lead in audio recording features like this.

There are some other hardware tweaks I think my help too. Better placement of mics or mic arrays can help, but I’d like to see more. One problem I’ve had with built-in mics is that if I’m typing while I’m recording the key clicking is too loud. Maybe that’s just me typing too hard. But if the distance to the speaker is too far away, the key tapping overwhelms what I’m trying to record.

A detachable wireless/bluetooth mic that is normally embedded in the Tablet PC case but could easily detach seems like it would reduce this key clicking noise problem. A downside is that the mic would be yet another thing for me to lose.

Maybe someone could manufacture an SD-sized bluetooth mic with a built in battery that I could at least house in the SD slot and pull out when needed. This way I could easily carry the mic around with me all the time and pull it out of the SD slot when needed.

If these far out ideas aren’t enough, I still have room in my heart for another killer audio capability–an ad hoc mic array. I’d like to see someone try to stream, synchronize and enhance the audio from multiple mobile devices/Tablets. All of the Tablets in a LAN would be sharing their mic streams in P2P fashion so that the strongest stream could be archived. I’m not sure if this could be done in real-time or not, but it seems like the audio signal processing could be done asynchronously. If the enhancements can’t be performed fast enough, then the audio quality is what it is. However, under ideal situations everyone would benefit from each other’s mics.

Maybe better mic technology with noise canceling will improve the audio recording enough so that these other more complicated scenarios aren’t needed. I don’t know. I guess I need to try out the new Motion Tablet to see how its mic array works with OneNote. Maybe this is all I need. Does anyone know how the mic array works?