self recorded voice prompt quality

[e-roc]

Hello all. Great site! Great Community! Looking forward to sharing and contributing in the future.

Have deployed the freeware version with success, running a block of SPA922's. The built in dual ethernet prot on the SPA 922 and 942 line is pretty slick. Saved me a ton of time and a few bucks in having to wire a new additional Cat5 line to the existing clients, not to mention, eating up additional ports on the hub/switch.

Looking forward to mastering this freeware version so i can purchase the small business setup... but needed to be self sufficient first on the freeware. And just had a chance to tour the new 3cx VAD app. really excited about the friendly GUI they use there. Ill be able to pass the management of this system down the ladder very soon.


Onto my problem... I have worked with a few different methods in self recording voice prompts. I have tried 2 different low end microphones, a digital audio recorder, as well as run all clips through Audacity sound editing software, and even though i have a great sounding voice prompt playing through the speakers on the PBX station, the voice prompt quality that plays on the test calls is very subpar, with a lot of distortion, static, and crackle. I have attempted both .wav and .mp3 formats, yet they sound the same on the test calls.

in applying the process of elimination, i also added a song in .mp3 format to the music on hold option. Although it is not loud, or bold by any means, it seems to play and sound better in all test calls. But is still not ideal. with that said, the built in 3cx prompts sound solid and true.

If i were running an analog setup, with a VOIP to an ATA gateway, i could understand the problems with the lines coming in hot, which gets you into echo, and all the other analog and PSTN terms. but seeing as how we arent subject to this with our IP phone setup, i dont understand where the problem is coming from. Also, if it were an issue with hot lines and echo, wouldnt the built in prompts also sound distorted? It could be a hardware issue, as the machine is older is the thing that is playing these wav and mp3 tracks... but, this setup should certainly suffice for these test calls.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated... thanks!

 

[comresource]

At the last 3CX partner conference Matt Harris said the best way to record your prompts was to simply create a dummy extension (Or use your own extension), call it from another extension, and let it go to voicemail. Leave your message and then grab it from the server and rename it as needed. I went to a nice quiet office and recorded what I needed. Worked great for me.

EDIT. Sorry it was Mike Harris.

Sorry bout that Mike

 

[e-roc]

At the last 3CX partner conference Matt Harris said the best way to record your prompts was to simply create a dummy extension (Or use your own extension), call it from another extension, and let it go to voicemail. Leave your message and then grab it from the server and rename it as needed. I went to a nice quiet office and recorded what I needed. Worked great for me.

Thanks for the quick response! i had not thought of the voicemail route before. that makes good sense, i will try to do this and see what happens. I also was in a quiet booth. It wasnt a distortion due to poor mic or record quality. i tested those wav files on multiple computers, and they played out perfectly each time. the best i could do to describe would be to picture a very choppy analog line. and i would be convinced it was a line issue, if it werent for the fact that the 3cx prompts are so bold and crystal clear.

 

[e-roc]

At the last 3CX partner conference Matt Harris said the best way to record your prompts was to simply create a dummy extension (Or use your own extension), call it from another extension, and let it go to voicemail. Leave your message and then grab it from the server and rename it as needed. I went to a nice quiet office and recorded what I needed. Worked great for me.

Thanks for the quick response! i had not thought of the voicemail route before. that makes good sense, i will try to do this and see what happens. I also was in a quiet booth. It wasnt a distortion due to poor mic or record quality. i tested those wav files on multiple computers, and they played out perfectly each time. the best i could do to describe would be to picture a very choppy analog line. and i would be convinced it was a line issue, if it werent for the fact that the 3cx prompts are so bold and crystal clear.

actually, right after sending this, i tested everything from the internal lines. i am drawing more towards a hardware issue, as the quality seems to fluctuate a little. i am going to play with the priorities some. i will continue posting to this as the situation develops.

 

[ziptalk]

At the last 3CX partner conference Matt Harris said the best way to record your prompts was to simply create a dummy extension (Or use your own extension), call it from another extension, and let it go to voicemail. Leave your message and then grab it from the server and rename it as needed. I went to a nice quiet office and recorded what I needed. Worked great for me.

EDIT. Sorry it was Mike Harris.

Sorry bout that Mike

I recorded a digital assistant today, and have to agree, the sound is not perfect. Your solution sounds a lot better, wish I read this post earlier! Nice nugget of wisdom there. Lewis

 

[ziptalk]

Just a follow-up post to say, recording via the voice mail method is significantly better quality, the SNOM microphones capture the sound very well. In fact we found the SNOMs to be excellent conference phones, if you're prepared to huddle closely together.

 

[e-roc]

Just a follow-up post to say, recording via the voice mail method is significantly better quality, the SNOM microphones capture the sound very well. In fact we found the SNOMs to be excellent conference phones, if you're prepared to huddle closely together.

Thank you for your Imput. it turned out to be a mixture of cheap hardware and mic/line in levels being out of whack. i have played with those settings, and even with the cheap primitive microphone i used from an old logitech webcame setup, it sounds pretty freakin good! Still a tad weak, but i wouldnt expect anything more without a professionally recorded studio session.

I am more excited than ever about this system. thanks again, and hopefully i will be able to contribute to the newbies in this forum some day.

 

[arkitekt]

Hey Everyone,

thanks for sharing your experiences and tips, I'm going to try the internal call to record the voicemail --- I had a previously recorded message that I wanted to use but although the original sounds fine when it's uploaded to the system it sounds very cheap and crackles like others were mentioning. I wish this would come out clear as I don't want to re-do the message at the same time I do want the quality better so I'm willing to give that a try.

I would still love to see an "upload" feature to attach a previously recorded message to a box --- if it needed to convert the message to the preferred format that would be fine to get the best quality sound.

Thanks again

Nathan

 

[e-roc]

Im actually going to revisit this as with the most previous post above, the quality of the uploaded .wav file is subpar compared to the quality of recording i have been able to generate via a higher quality microphone and sound editing software. The quality of the recording is prestine. but once uploaded, it is still choppy and distorted. Yet the quality of the music on hold is still good.

I feel this has something to do with the dB levels, but cant seem to modify these enough to increase the quality, yet at the same time maintain a loud enough recording. I am surprised that there arent any settings within the #cx software to adjust things like volume. if there are, then i have not located them yet, and would then feel pretty foolish.

 

[DeWild1]

I found that using a windows mobile 6X phone, and some audio software, (do not remember the name) was the best.
Reason is no power back ground noise.. The hum that 110 volts or any computer makes is gone this way.
But I have not tried the leaveing a message way.
You can hear mine, 888-677-7777

 

[bertarecchia]

What if you want to add some professional music in the background?

To help others that might have the same questions.... :

A nice improvement came when I got the message in the attached photo, after trying to upload an mp3 file.
Using audacity I was able to reduce the file. Now I have music and a decent sounding greeting. Still not the best though.

 

[Wayne Goldsmith]

So, here we are almost 6 yrs after the last post it seems, and audio quality is still sub par for recorded prompts! I use an artificial voice on my Mac (Ava) and Audio Hijack to record it, and Audacity to massage and convert. Still sounds really bad, especially compared to the supplied system prompts. Could 3cx possibly share how these were made so we can all have professional sounding phone systems?

 

[ivank]

Files recorded via phone are stored using ADPCM codec which is not good for music/high quality speech but take little space on the disk.
If you need good quality prompts, create them using any decent sound software and save as ordinary PCM, 16-bit, mono format WAV file.

 

[Wayne Goldsmith]

Hi there, thank you for the prompt attention to this, I do appreciate it! What I am finding is that the 8khz restriction does not seem to work very well with the artificial voice I am using. Is there any way to adjust this? I am not concerned about disk space!