Making professional sounding greetings.. 2

[snootalope]

I'm looking for some software or an easy way of making professional sounding voice prompts. In our setup we use Cisco Unity which plays wav files. Anyway, I've got a few area's where I need to have a professional sounding greeting ask the caller to press 1, 2, 3, etc..

Is there anything out there that can take what I type, like "Hello, yada yada, please press...." and turn that into an audio file that can be used for a greeting? Thing is, the voice that reads the greeting needs to be real clear of course...professional sounding. See what I'm going for here?

Anyone know of anything that can help me?

 

[kwbMitel]

I doubt you will find any Text to Speech converters that will give you the quality you appeat to be requesting.

There are several online services that will record prompts from a script. I understand that they can be quite reasonably priced. (never used them myself)

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[snootalope]

Wow...just tried a couple of those online ones. SOUND HORRIBLE!

Thanks though!

 

[kwbMitel]

Sorry I was unclear, I was dismissing text to speech as an option. There are people that will record your script for you in a professional sounding voice (Male or Female).

A quick search found the following (Google IVR Voice Recording)

http://www.worldlyvoices.com/

http://www.amazingvoice.com/

http://www.greatvoiceco.com/

http://www.ivrsoft.com/recording-voice-prompts.htm

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[SF0751]

To obtain professional-sounding recordings, use a professional. We use GM Voices and are very pleased with their service.

Susan
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.

 

[whykap]

Check this site out:

http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

It's free but I don't know about proffesional sounding. Actually for text to speech it is pretty darn good.

 

[SYQUEST]

Find someone with a good voice and enunciation, that can speak clearly, have them rehearse the scripts, then record them in a quiet room. May be two or three takes. It is not that difficult if you plan and practice to make it happen.

Then save the scripts for future changes, that way you will have a source.

....JIM....

 

[kwbMitel]

SyQuest, there is no comparison between the sound quality of a studio voice recording and one done thru the phone. The best voice and enunciation is ruined by the quality of the equipment used to record it.

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[Sympology]

One thing when using external recordings. They need to be done at the correct sample rate and duplex. Find out from your phones system (in your case Cisco) the correct rates.

If yopu want an example of how bad things can go. Do a recording in 44khz stereos and then mix down to 8khz mono. It will sound terrible (unless using a really good software prog). Record and 8hz mono in the first place,although it won't sound great, it will sound 100x better than the mix down.

We do all ours in house and I clean up using Audacity & Wavepad (dependant on source), but I've done Studio recording courses and did loads of synth & sample stuff back in the 90's so it's easy for me.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[RyanEOD]

One thing to remember, if you are doing this for a phone system, there will be a point you hit that it is going to sound as good as it is going to get due to the PCM that is being used. So, while some of the more professional type recordings will help, don't let them jack you up with an expensive cost for something that doesn't sound any different than what someone does for a fraction of the cost. It would be a big thing to ask for a phone number to call for an example of a system they have done. They should have no problem providing that.

 

[Delster]

There is a voice recorder bundled in with windows (start -> programs -> accessories)

Just plug a headset with mic in, get it set up correctly and record as hi quality. Save as wav and your good to go. I've done dozens of messages using this.

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umm,it IS supposed to do that, right??

 

[kwbMitel]

Delster - Most phone systems will not accept the format you describe. Additionally, a common headset and computer will do no better than recording directly into the phone system.

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[Delster]

kwbMitel need to check your facts i'm afraid.

Original post specifically states it plays wav format. Also several of the systems i've worked on accept wav.

As for quality....i've done dozens of these on a major call center site and had excelent results. It's a question of getting it set up right with mic in correct position and levels set correctly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
umm,it IS supposed to do that, right??

 

[Sympology]

The other advantage of using a pc is that you can do trim, compression, equalizastion, reverb, even stick music behind.

Also you can take a file and split it, so that you may stick a wlecome message on then a seperate IVR. That way, you can easily chop and change sections as required.
I've even chopped multiple messages into a single new messages (usually in an emergency).

So I'd say, where possible, use a pc.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[kwbMitel]

Delster, with every phone system I have been involved with that uses a wav format, the sub type of wav format has been 8kHz-8 bit mono U-Law.

If I followed you directions, it would not be this format and would not work.

If however, I set the Wav format to the one required by the phone system AND used a high quality noise canceling headset, the voice recording might approach the sound quality of a professional recording.

That being said, the recording would still suffer from the skill of the person speaking. A professional recording is easily identifiable from an amateur even when using the same quality of equipment.

Please read the subject line of the original post before debating any of my assertions.

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[Delster]

kwbMitel You've worked with some very restrictive systems then. I've been able to utilise upto 128kbps 32bit stereo wav recordings.

If your platform only supports the 8kbps format you mention then any professional recording you had made would have to be immediatly degraded for the system to accept it.

It is perfectly possible to produce professional sounding greetings in house. Of course a professional studio will produce a better recording but it has to be remembered that your playing that recording back to the caller over the PSTN most of the time. So absolute quality isn't as important as avoiding things like blow & breathing noise.

There are problems associated with outsourcing your recordings. 1st is cost, 2nd is time. If you can do these in house you can respond to customer changes, and customers do like to change things, with minimal cost and time required.

I agree that you need somebody with a good voice and elocution to produce the best results along with a decent microphone. Also agree that text to speech units are still fairly poor though they have improved quite substantially.

Re the subject line...it was how to make not how to outsource recordings. So your original response didn't address the query whereas mine did.

Also i only debated your assertions after you queried mine by stating that most systems won't take wav format. In this case the one we're looking for a solution on does take it though the max quality wasn't stated.

I've personally done recordings for a major multi site call center for one of the biggest companies in the global telecoms arena using PC & headset and been complemented on results.

The basic tips are use a good microphone, do initial recording at max possible data rate, pick somebody with a good voice in the relevent language, avoid breathing and blow into mic. Follow these and you'll get perfectly acceptable recordings.

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umm,it IS supposed to do that, right??

 

[kwbMitel]

Delster - We obviously have differing opinions on what level of quality "Professional" or "Acceptable" is.

I never said that most systems don't take wav files. I said that most systems won't accept the format you described. (Hi Quality, of said wav files). Granted, I could have been more clear.

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.