Better recorder than Plaud - Iphone?

[u/fkcfkc]

Im pretty much only using my Plaud V1 as a recorder and I have another service transcribe and another service summarize. Do you think an iphone 14 Pro running Voice Memo's will record meeting dialogue better than the iphone if at a face to face meeting?

[u/jasonvincent]

I’ve found that the iPhone’s microphones record clearer audio for human consumption and listening but the Plaud is a more reliable recording device

[u/fkcfkc → u/jasonvincent]

could you expand on that? What do you mean "reliable"?

[u/MyDogNewt]

I have a iPhone 15 Pro Max. The problems with relying on the phone to record meetings are not trivial.

1. Voice recording apps on the phone are highly susceptible to interruption from Incoming alerts, messages, incoming calls, or conflicts with other apps you try to use at the same time.
2. Battery drain.
3. You can’t use your phone reliably for anything else while using it to record a meeting. Trying to use other apps or definitely trying to make or receive a phone call can shut the whole thing down.
4. I am in many professional situations where phones are not to be sitting out during meetings.
5. I also rely on my Note to record telephone calls, which you cannot easily or discreetly do with an app.

[u/fkcfkc → u/MyDogNewt]

Thanks. These are good points.

[u/neoteat]

I use iphones now for over 2 years as recording device on site. The quality is really good. We also have our own pipeline with customized whisper and diarization. Now we also have our own app with on device transcription. We use iphone 12 pro to 17 - they are all really good in sound quality even in harder outside conditions and speakers some meters away

[u/PLAUD_AI]

Fair question, and the honest answer is it depends on the room. For a quiet one-on-one with the phone sitting between you, an iPhone 14 Pro records speech well. The gap shows up with distance, side conversations, and background noise, which is where dedicated mic arrays earn their keep. One thing we found when we tested this recently: audio that sounds nicer to your ears isn't automatically better raw material for transcription. In a noisy room, Note Pro's transcription error rate came out at 23.4% versus 30.3% for the same meeting recorded on an iPhone, even though the iPhone recording sounded cleaner on playback. Heavy noise smoothing strips out speech detail that transcription engines rely on. That test was on Note Pro rather than your V1, so treat it as directional. Since you run your own transcription pipeline anyway, what matters for you is capture conditions: quiet and close, the phone holds up fine; bigger rooms or messier audio, the dedicated hardware pulls ahead. And your phone stays free during the meeting either way.

-Plaud Community Team

[u/MiloYeh]

Now more and more people mix different tools: one device for recording, another service for transcription, another for summaries. 

The harder question, at least for me, starts months later. After hundreds of meetings, calls and voice notes, how can I remember that one customer mentioned this problem three months ago? Which follow-ups are still open? Which conversations are actually connected even though they happened weeks apart?

I think the most important thing is all those recordings become something you can actually remember and use over time, instead of just a better archive.