A voice recorder for your PC

What you get: a WAV made for editing

Octoolo records your voice as a WAV file: mono, 48 kHz, 16-bit. Nothing is compressed, so nothing is lost before you edit, and every program that handles sound can open it. Each file is named with the date and time, so takes line up in order in a folder.

• Mono, because one microphone hears one channel. It plays from both speakers and takes half the space of stereo.
• 48 kHz, the rate video uses, so a voice-over drops straight into a video project.
• About 5.8 MB a minute, or roughly 350 MB an hour.

That is big for sending. To share a recording, turn it into an MP3 with Convert sound files (see WAV to MP3). A mono voice at Small becomes a 64 kbps MP3, about half a megabyte a minute, and at Balanced a 96 kbps one with a little more detail.

Getting a good recording

The meter is the most useful thing on the screen. Speak at your normal volume and watch it: the loudest words should push it well up, but it should not sit at the very end. If it barely moves, raise the microphone's input level in Windows' Sound settings, or move closer.

• Distance: a hand's width or two from the microphone gives a full voice without breath noise.
• The room: fans, heaters and open windows end up in every recording, and a bare room adds echo.
• The microphone: a headset or USB microphone near your mouth beats a laptop's built-in one across the desk.
• Mistakes: pause, take a breath and say the sentence again. You can cut the slip out later.

Afterwards, drop the WAV into the Audio Editor to trim the start and end, reduce background noise and even out the loudness.

Windows' Sound Recorder, or Octoolo?

Windows has a recorder of its own: Sound Recorder on Windows 11, called Voice Recorder on Windows 10. For a quick memo it does the job, and it is already on your PC. Octoolo's recorder earns its place when the recording is the start of something:

• it sits next to an editor with four tracks, so a voice-over can go over music straight away,
• noise reduction and even loudness are one switch each,
• exports include MP3, M4A, FLAC, Opus and iPhone ringtones,
• Convert sound files turns a whole folder of takes into MP3s at once.

Octoolo's recorder takes the microphone only. To record what the computer itself plays, such as a call or a video, use the screen recorder with Computer sound switched on, then take the sound out of the MP4 it makes.

What people record with it

• Voice-overs for tutorials and family videos, laid on the Voice lane of the Video Editor next to the music: see add music to a video.
• Podcast episodes and interviews, recorded in parts and put together in the audio joiner.
• Practice: a speech, a language lesson, an audition or a song, played back to hear how it really sounds.
• Notes to self and lecture summaries, kept as files on your own disk.
• Ringtones in your own voice, made with the ringtone maker.

Dictation is the one thing it will not do: Octoolo does not turn speech into text, so what you get is the recording itself, ready to edit, share or keep. Because the takes stay on your disk rather than on a website, private conversations, personal notes or a child's first words stay with you.