VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Lee Gordon · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 1:20 am Post subject:

µ -- It's not just a bad idea. It's the law.
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Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
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Bruce · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 8:05 am Post subject:

Knock Knock.

Who's there?

Interrupting Mathematician.

Interrupting Mathemat...

µ

Rolls Eyes

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 8:51 am Post subject:

Converting to mu-Law in Audition...Images from Audition 3 - the file was captured at 44.1/16 bit.

First convert the file to 8K. Do NOT change the bit rate.

Then Save As - A/mu-Law - A is for Europe. mu is for US. It should be preset at mu.

I have been saving this way in Audition (Cool Edit) for more than 10 years.
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Mandy Nelson · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 9:03 am Post subject:

yarg28 · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 2:46 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the screen shots! I'll try it later. I'm pretty sure the missing step in my audition process was converting to 8k before encoding. Nothing i saw/read anywhere told me to do that.

Thanks again!

gary

ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 3:10 pm Post subject:

If you don't convert it, and just save it as a mu-Law file, it will compress it, but it will not change the sample rate.

It will sound great. Kind of like saving something as an mp3 file. It makes it smaller, but it still sounds good.

I am not a computer/telephony geek by any means, I just have the specialized software and have, by asking questions and experimenting, found what works.

For example, I was reading an early message board with some people on it who were doing telephony and someone used the word prompter. As I recall, it must have been a Vox Studio specific forum and the only reason to that point that I had that software was because I needed to save my files in a very obscure telephony format for a regular monthly client (going on over 10 years now). But from this one word, I was able to determine that she meant that the software could read a file and put up prompts and then save them automatically with the right file names.

Plus it could do the silence at the beginning and end and normalize. It was like the heaven's opened up. Now you can use Word2WAV and Read 2 Record to do much of this with much easier script formatting.
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Bruce · Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:48 am Post subject:

This is probably a rhetorical question, but if anyone has a good answer I'll take it.

µ-Law was used in phone systems a long time ago because memory was cumbersome and expensive and this "thin" audio format didn't take up much space. Also, it's low audio quality didn't matter with the narrow band of telephone EQ of the day.

Now that storage is super cheap and quality rising why aren't voice mail system producers using more standard audio formats? Or are they, and I just missed the µve?

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

Mandy Nelson · Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 10:07 am Post subject:

There are many systems out there that use "normal" audio formats. If you were buying a system today you would have that option. However, so many companies have had their existing phones/systems for years and don't have a need to change them. Actually, most companies have no idea that their phone system takes a special format because that is not what they do. I often have to ask the client to send me a file so we can determine what the format is.

There are several other reasons - like sales of systems - that keep the crazy formats in use. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Perhaps if it didn't all get dumbed down to 8k, regardless of quality coming out of the studio, then people would request the best audio possible.
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Bruce · Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:27 am Post subject:

Thanks Mandy!

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .