VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[georgethetech]

Hey gang:
I got asked about IVR, have zero experience in this department. It sounds to me when I call the number she gave me it sounds over modulated.
Any advice is appreciated.
Here's what she asked me:

Here's an issue I need help with as soon as you get a chance: I recorded a short telephone greeting for a VoIP company. I saved the audio file as a Windows PCM .wav format (44100kHz, 16-bit, mono, normalized 100%, amplified 3dB cut). The client LOVED the reads and hired me. Then they threw me a curveball. Could I send it back to them in .wav, 8kHz, 16-bit, mono. Hmmm ... I've tried this before and had nothing but trouble trying to downsample to fit telephone formats.

Sure enough, when I used db Poweramp Music Converter program to downsample and compress to 8kHz, the client called to say the audio had a lot of hiss on the "s" and "sh" words. Very sibilant. (sigh) I hate dealing with this, but it's a big client so I'm tap dancing and trying to make them happy. I tell all my clients beforehand that I only do one type of format but they still manage to finagle changes on me.

To try and rectify things, I sent them an unnormalized version, a version with me reading far away from the mic, one where I asked Cool Edit Pro to do the downsampling, the desser, the hiss removal feature -- nothing gets rid of the "sssssssss" sound. Everything else sounds good, it's just the "s" and "sh" words. How do I get rid of that? What am I doing wrong?

The client posted the recording into their system for the time being. However, they're waiting on me to somehow fix this. If you want to hear what it actually sounds like, here's the number for the Neighborhood Church Castro Valley 510-537-4690. (I'm not dealing with the church -- I'm dealing with the VoIP company)
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If it sounds good, it is good.
George Whittam
GeorgeThe.Tech
424-226-8528
VOBS.TV Co-host
TheProAudioSuite.com Co-host
TriBooth.com Co-founder

[Ed Gambill]

The BIG DOG in the world of IRV/ Robo Calls/ Predictive Dialing is Dialogic a part of Intel.

But they don't have all the business. We need to know what hardware is being used.

I have 4 Dialogic cards that I set up every 4 years to do Robo Call for candidates and each time I have to re learn the proper method to set up the audio.

From the description given it sound like the talent is conditioning the audio for Dialogic but the card used in the end users system might be any one of several companies and it may not like VOX files. For telephone sound one file type does not fit all.
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[Lance Blair]

With EQ notch out everything below 200Hz and above 8kHz before the processing and downsampling. That should be a much cleaner and clearer result.
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Skype: globalvoiceover
and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

[georgethetech]

Thanks for that, Lance. I had a hunch that it would help to do an aggressive notch. I don't know what system her client is using, only that they wanted files delivered in a certain format.
_________________
If it sounds good, it is good.
George Whittam
GeorgeThe.Tech
424-226-8528
VOBS.TV Co-host
TheProAudioSuite.com Co-host
TriBooth.com Co-founder

[Lizden]

When you're dealing with phone systems, the sound - given the bandwidth & hardware storage of most systems - leaves a lot to be desired....and when you downsample, there will be a certain "ssss-ness"

An 8K 16bit file probably sounds better than most believe it or not.

That said, you need to know EXACTLY what format is needed....and that 16bit/8k format is not very common, which leads me to think they might actually want some sort of 8bit 8K file

BUT:
An 8bit 8K Mulaw .wav file is not the same thing as an 8bit 8K PCM .wav file is not the same thing as an 8bit 8K Mu-Law .vox file (They are all mono)...telephony can be so much fun!

If they can confirm the file format that may solve the issue...and actually the 8bit 8K Mu-Law .vox file sounds the best of all of them, but again, it has to be what the system requires.

Can she confirm that that 8K 16bit is what the client needs?
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Liz de Nesnera O.A.V. ~ Livin' The VO Dream!
English/French Bilingual VO w/ ISDN
HireLiz.com / liz@hireliz.com

[georgethetech]

Thanks everyone... In the harsh world of voiceover, you gotta fast, cheap AND good (whatever happened to "pick two"?)
I just heard back from my client:

Thanks for all your help. A lot of this telephony file format stuff goes straight over my head. By the time I got your info this afternoon, the client had already replaced me with someone else. And get this -- they didn't even bother to tell me. Nice, huh? I found out by calling the client's phone to test the sound quality of my previous audio files, only to hear another girl's voice on there. Ouch. I think I'll stop recording telephony projects for a while. Too much hassle, zero appreciation for jumping through hoops.
_________________
If it sounds good, it is good.
George Whittam
GeorgeThe.Tech
424-226-8528
VOBS.TV Co-host
TheProAudioSuite.com Co-host
TriBooth.com Co-founder

[Bruce]

Condolences to your client, George.

I'm sure the reason the phone equipment manufacturers have used these ultra-thin formats for audio was the size and expense of audio storage....back in the 1970's. Now that you can put the complete recorded works of William Shakespeare on a storage device the size of a quarter, and at a cost not much more than a quarter, why aren't they going to more standard formats like mp3? or even regular wav? I know that high quality audio doesn't matter with the limited audio range of phone lines, but why not take a couple of ugly conversion steps out of the process?

I know this is a rhetorical question, but someone's gotta ask it.

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. .

[Lizden]

Bruce, we who do a lot of telephony have been asking ourselves that question for years!

Once .mp3s came out we figured GREAT! Our lives just got easier....not so.

You're right in that a lot of these systems were installed way before .mp3sn were around, and you're right that it had everything to do with file SIZE and nothing to do with QUALITY.

Huge phone trees were recorded for older systems that saved banks & large corporations millions of dollars and trapped people in endless loops of bad sounding prompts.

BUT
Now that a lot of the younger managers & designers know that a small file can sound great, they are frustrated with the fact that the older systems they are forced to work on don't meet that quality standard they're used to in their iPod.

So what do they do?
Instead of using an already available standard like .mp3, they start using yet another proprietary format like G729 that an outside vendor (like us) can't convert to unless we pay thousands for a licensing fee (so expensive that even the VoxStudio people are not not touching it), so the client is forced to do the conversion for those systems themselves & we get the blame that we're not able to provide that service.

But many of the older systmes systems still work, are still able to be updated by those of us that know how, so - like the "older technology" of ISDN - these older systems are going to be around for quite a while yet.

It can be frustrating!

Sorry about her losing the gig.
_________________
Liz de Nesnera O.A.V. ~ Livin' The VO Dream!
English/French Bilingual VO w/ ISDN
HireLiz.com / liz@hireliz.com

[Mandy Nelson]

George, that just sucks. Poor gal. My hubby has dealt with every system, every conversion, every kind of client and there are times I catch him scratching his head over why the conversion doesn't sound right and how it needs to be fixed. I work with a number of designers, and have had discussions with some of the top designers in the world, and believe it or not, they are really working hard at making the existing systems sound and behave better all while trying to make a better new system. A standard, updated system is so far off that it may never happen.

FYI - as for endless phone loops, those will become a thing of the past. And in many large financial companies they already have. They have systems that recognize the user and can get them what they want quicker. For example, if Mrs. Nelson calls every two weeks to make sure her social security check has cashed, then the system recognizes her phone number, can great her by name in some cases, and ask her immediately if she wants to check her balance. Also, if Mrs. Cooper calls and has a very fast response time to the questions then the questions actually speed up and every time she calls they become more custom to her needs.

Meanwhile, grocery stores will still give you a convoluted tree just to get to customer service.

Now my head is spinning with AA/IVR/PBX/Natural Language information that I'll refrain from spitting out here.
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[Lance Blair]

Great thread!

Another thing which might help in the future is downcoverting before the levels get up near -3db. Might not help, but might.

If I know the client needs the sound for web or phone I record it dark on the way in...no sheen or air to it, and no rissssssssssk of sibilance.

That's why I dig the new flatter mic I'm using - it doesn't sound opulent but you can spit sunflower seeds while reading the S section of the phone book and you won't be sibilant.
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Skype: globalvoiceover
and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

[Diane Maggipinto]

I've never had luck converting 44,1 16-bit mono to formats for phone (standard for my clients is 8k, 8-bit mono mu-law wav) using Adobe Audition (Cool Edit). But using the RE20 and Vox Studio for recording and conversion is a slam dunk every time. When clients futz about format, don't know what the end product should be, or need to talk with IT, I strongly suggest the aforementioned as a standard and they're thankful that I just removed a step from their job. But these are not huge VoIP companies.
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