Help ~ answering machine recording not good quality!

Janet Slissman · **Voice Seeker** Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 1

I recently hired 2 people thru Voice123 to produce and record a studio quality telephone greeting (with music) for my business that would be played over my AT&T Land Line (Digital 2.4GHz cordlessAT&T #2256) and my Verizon cell phone. The demo sounds terrific over the computer and they tried to download it into my answering system by accessing with passwords, but it does not sound good. Some feedback and the music does not sound good. What should we do? Got any ideas??? Is there something that I need to purchase? Or some tip that I can pass along to them? Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Janet

[b]

Haneen Arafat · Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007, 22:37 (GMT) Post subject:

Janet,

Perhaps this discussion will help you? It's regarding the ulaw format for telephony.

http://www.voiceoversavvy.com/ftopic4216.html

Haneen
http://www.haneenarafat.com

Todd Ellis · Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007, 13:05 (GMT) Post subject:

unfortunately, that thread won't apply in this situation. since neither the at&t phone nor the verizon cell phone are KEY or PBX systems, they won't know how do deal with a mu-law file. in my experience, short of cracking the case on the phone and tapping into the hard-wired mic - there is not a really good way to do it. keep in mind that you're only going to get 24kpbs - mono over a POTS line (maybe 48kbps w/ VoIP) so the quality is going to be nowhere near what you hear from your stereo speakers from the git-go.

Johnny Milford · Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007, 14:59 (GMT) Post subject:

I suspect they may not be using a proper phone patch to feed the audio down the line. In other words, are they simply holding the phone receiver up to a computer speaker? That would explain feedback and poor sound quality. Even so, as Todd pointed out, phone lines are quite limited in their frequency response and fidelity. That's not to say you can't have a good-sounding message. As I said, I suspect it's the method of transfer to blame here. Hope that helps!

Lance Blair · Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007, 15:49 (GMT) Post subject:

It's also good to EQ the heck out of files meant for low resolution (nothing below 200Hz and nothing above 10kHz, for example).