Sarah’s tale of woe and amazingly good sound

..... aka when my audio was so good I was accused of sneaking to the Congo in the Covid lockdown.

The phone rang as I was listening back to the morning’s programme, with a sliver of pride. It WAS a good show today.  I started tapping at the keyboard to begin a BBC online feature to accompany the story.

The phone call was from my BBC boss at the time: “Sarah, I loved the programme…. “But”…. there was a pause. A pause is never a good thing, nor is a ‘but’ after a compliment. 

“When EXACTLY did you go to the Congo to record this?” 

Cast your mind back to 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic raged, and life was anything but normal. 

A week before the programme aired, at home isolating with pretty much asymptomatic Coronavirus and unable to venture as far as the village shop, I woke early. Fumbling through the radio app on my phone, the first thing I came to was an interview on BBC World Service news about ranger deaths at Virunga National Park in the DRC at the hands of militia groups. What a story this is, I thought, and did some focused morning-Googling.

At the time, a friend was stationed in Goma in the east of the DRC, and had visited Virunga with the UN - they gave me some nuanced background. I found the mobile number for Prince Emmanuel de Merode (don’t ask me how) - who runs the park - fired off a WhatsApp to ask him for an interview, and started the process of researching the story to run as a whole episode of the BBC’s Business Daily programme.

My colleague Vivienne was presenting, and luckily was as captivated by Virunga as I was.

The gorilla was mystified about accusations of a secret trip to the DRC (pic credit Adobestock/Janos)

So why, on the day it aired on the BBC World Service - a day of massive celebration for Viv and I - was my boss calling to ask if we had broken numerous laws, and presumably spent a vast amount of money to get to a remote area of the DRC blighted by violence?

Well, obviously, dear reader, we hadn’t. Vivienne and I, had, like any sensible audio journalist, connected to Prince Emmanuel whilst we were sitting in our respective homes and he was in his office in the heart of the vast National Park, thousands of miles away. 

But the sound quality of Emmanuel’s recording was so good that instead of popping the cork on a bottle of No-Secco, I spent five hours convincing my boss that everything had been done remotely.

So how had this absurd situation come to pass? Well simply, Emmanuel had followed the instructions we’d given him for a beautiful, seamless “simulrec.” That is literally all. A simulrec is a colloquialism for a simultaneous recording, and it was without a doubt, transformational for us journalists reaching people in the most remote corners of the Earth. Thanks in large part to the smartphone revolution, with a few key instructions, we could get a guest “in quality” wherever they may be.

Which brings me on to the exciting ‘tech’ part….

What matters when recording a simulrec? 

1) Talk the interviewee through it first - it sounds complex whereas it is very simple - so when you take a briefing with them, walk them through it and ask them to practice.

2) Follow up with a short, easy-to-follow written guide. 

3) Ask them to either hold the phone like a microphone 6-8 inches from their mouth, or if they are an arm-waver/it’s a long call, ask them to hold it like an old-school telephone to the ear. Sounds weird but it works! Too close is a disaster (I’ve been there!!!) there’s nothing much we can do with distorted audio but we CAN fix quiet audio, which is what you’ll get if the phone is too far away.. 

4) When you connect on Zoom/Teams/Riverside, check, check, and check again… is the phone on airplane mode so we don’t stop the recording if they get a call? Is the sound wave moving? It is? GREAT—now we’re rolling. 

5) Ask them to use headphones for their Zoom/Teams/Riverside if possible so that audio doesn’t bleed into the voice memo. Tell them NOT to connect AirPods/bluetooth headphones to the phone.

6) Find a quiet spot - so obvious but so often forgotten (as is - please silence notifications on the laptop/desktop). Rooms with a lot of echo are also a no-no.

7) When the recording is done, talk the guest through sending it! Make sure it is saved, and that they have turned off airplane mode so they can email it to you as a file (usually an MP4). Do NOT share on WhatsApp as it compresses the quality of the audio. Email is best! 

So thank you, Prince Emmanuel de Merode, for not only recording a flawless simulrec, but also providing some immersive sounds of Virunga, and causing me a lot of amusement the day the programme went on air.  I always say - if someone in the middle of a national park in the Congo can be recorded in quality that’s good enough for a BBC documentary style show - then ANYONE can. It just takes a bit of patience and some clear coaching. 

Want to find out more about remote recording, arrange some coaching, and access our “how to” technical guide? Get in touch!