Tumi: CaptureAudio for iPhone review

CaptureAudio for iPhone review

CaptureAudio by the makers of CaptureNotes is a beautiful new voice memos app for iPhone that lets you organize your recordings into binders and notebooks. You can also flag important moments during a recording that you can quickly jump to during playback.

CaptureAudio features three main tabs: Binders, Notebooks, and Recording. The tabs represent hierarchy system that goes left to right. All recordings are in a Notebook and all Notebooks are in a Binder. For example, you may have a school binder filled with notebooks for each subject. The notebooks are where you store your recordings.

The big microphone button in the bottom of the toolbar launches the recording screen. It features big circular dials and a big timer at the top. The outermost ring of the circle is a bunch of icons that represent flags (test item, group project, research, etc), and the next ring can be rotated to point the marker to a flag. To set the flag, just tap the big Flag button. These spots in your recording are quickly accessible during playback.

CaptureAudio includes two flag groups: one for business and one for education. A flag group is a group of 8 icons that will be available to you while recording audio. There are 85 available icons that you can create your own flag groups with.

The organizational idea of using binders and notebooks is great, but I'm not a fan of the tabular implementation. It feels awkward. I feel like each tab should be something new, but instead they are a subset of the tab to its left. Once you get used to it, it's not bad, but I believe you shouldn't have to 'get used to' an app; it should come natural.

The good

Incredibly intuitive recording interface
Drop "flags" to mark important moments
Flags can be renamed on the fly
Create custom flags sets
Categorize recordings in binders/notebooks
Amazing playback screen showing all flags
Easily access all recordings via iTunes

The bad

Tabular hierarchy is awkward
There's a bug that causes the Notebooks tab to only show notebooks in the binder you most recently created a notebook for

The bottom line

Although I'm not a huge fan of how folders are organized into tabs, CaptureAudio is still great app for voice recording. The ability to easily tag while recording is a huge convenience and will been appreciated by students and business people who like to record classes, meetings, interviews and more.

$1.99 - Download now