EMF meters detect e electro-magnetic and the possibility of an electrical source must be ruled out as far as possible. Appliances, televisions, digital alarm clocks, power lines, etc. all emit EMF's while in use. Try the EMF on your T.V. set while it is both on and off. Take note of how far the EMF extends away from the set itself.
Digital/Analogue Voice recorder If using analogue equipment, try and use a recording device that has a microphone separate from the case. Microphones that are inbuilt often record noise generated from the internal motor and turning wheels.
Mini Disk Recorders such as Sony NetMD are ideal for digital recording with almost crystal clear recording. An added bonus is that it is also relatively easy to upload sound files to your computer making storing and filing simple and effective for the serious researcher.
Tape Recorders with external microphones were the most common form of recording. Tape’s however can be affected by external frequencies much more so than digital recording devices which means that the likelihood of getting quantity is good but the liklihood of getting quality is poor and determining what is evp, and not some other electrical magnetic interference for example, would be very difficult.
Stereo systems with a microphone in socket are not, in our view good for evp recordings. The reasoning behind this is because of the strong possibility of receiving voices from radio signals. There is nothing more disappointing than to find your expected evp voices are a test cricket match or similar however, it is good to experiment and test this out for yourselves.
Microphones vary and any microphone will do the job although there are some that would be preferred by the serious researcher but these can be very expensive. Ideally a microphone that records down to 18 HZ would be ideal as this is where infrasound resides and there is still a lot to discover in this field. However for the majority we have found that the Boundary microphone (952.194) is ideal. It is Uni/Omni directional too and is not quite so expensive.
Computer software. This is used for reducing noise levels in your recordings and also for enhancing the evp voices. It can be very useful but care needs to be taken in learning about the software and not over editing the evp voices as distortion will occur. CoolEdit was very good but it appears they have sold out to Adobe which will be just as good but probably more expensive. There is also Audacity editing and recording software which can be downloaded for free from: Audacity-Software.org
Another software editing package is Praat. This is a bit more difficult to use but it is very good for working with evp. Again this can be downloaded for free as can tutorials on how to use it! Praat: doing Phonetics by Computer Free software for acoustic analysis. (by Paul Boersma, University of Amsterdam) www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ - 8k
Paper Record Sheets will be needed besides files kept on computer. you can either design your own or download ours for free.