Howto:Creating fine announcements and music on hold

Applies To

This information applies to

innovaphone PBX

More Information

The innovaphone PBX allows playing audio files in Waiting Queues, Music on Hold and trough XML commands and so a bunch of “audio-scenarios” are possible; from simple once like customized MOH up to complex setups like small IVR’s. But often the sound quality is very poor when you call: music on hold with ugly sound, self-made IVR with nearly incomprensive messages does not really give “additional value” to your customer or improve the image. A pity because you are in front of a marvelous system which is able to do work perfect if the input is done well. So if you have “experience” with embarrassing voice prompts or worst music reproduction maybe it could help reading this article. If you just plan to offer audio services to your customer; read it too. If you are not sure about audio: read it! Remember that if the impression for a caller is disastrous the result will be de-marketing for your customer. So it could be better use tones and standard MOH.

One fundamental point is having good audio source files for all “audio services”. The best result is achieved using a professional speaker in a recording studio. If you have this type of quality in mind for your solution we are very happy, contact a recording studio and the result for the source will be perfect. But many customers want play a “house made” audio file, a quick and in most cases simple solution without any complication and delays trading with recording studios and stuff like that. Audio is available on each PC and so click and go solutions are frequently used. This article gives you some hints what to observe in producing reasonable good sounding “handmade” audio files. So here is how to simulate a professional appearance.

Important

innovaphone is operating in the switching market and is not an “audio company”. This article tries just to help people who have even minor experience then us in creating audio files for telephony use (definitely a lot of people …). So do not expect from us the ultimate audio hint, anyway internet is full of that stuff. And if you are a PC freak some statements and tips are obsolete and you can and should use your own professional or alternative tools.

All the software, free- and shareware we mentioned in this article is just to inform you: not to invite you to use it, we do not recommend any application. Inform yourself also always about the copyrights and relatives items. Remember that music is a “protected good” and you have to observe authors rights and generally the relative regulations in your country. In some countries playing any music on a “public” trunk line means also the obligation to pay charges. Note that even all the samples you find here are just samples for training purpose and not for production use. All trademarks and companies named in this article are used just as example. Innovaphone will not respond of them nor of the usage of those products.

Problem Details

The production of your audio application in an innovaphone PBX can be spitted in the following steps:

1. one Creating the audio file
2. two Normalization of the audio source
3. three Compiling the audio source in the telephone formats
4. four Copy of the telephone format files in the destination directory
5. five Setup in your innovaphone PBX.

This last step will not be described in this article; you will find a lot of articles about that in this wiki, just follow the links at the end of this article.

1. Creating the audio file

Voice files

The simplest way to produce telephony voice prompts is to use the telephone set, for example using this xml: Howto:Simple Message Management In this sample the recording is done using a telephone set, nice for self made prompts, but you will always hear that the recording is done using a phone set. No editing using standard software is possible. Another way to producing Voice Prompts is using text-to-speech software (TTS). For example Acapela has a nice interface and product; you can try a demo on http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html The disadvantage using computer generated prompts is that you hear immediately the “computer voice”. On the other hand it is much better than many self-made registrations. So we can say that it is not an optimal solution but you have at least “constantly quality” which is better in many cases. TTS solves also the problem if you don’t have a native speaker. Better results are possible recording the announcement with a microphone directly on your PC (that is also the option people like). You can do this using an application or just the audio recorder tool in the folder accessories of your XP or Vista/Win7 operating system. Using Laptop build in microphones is not recommended, better are external microphones. The cheapest are the build in one in the headset for gamer. The advantage of those headsets with microphone is that you can use them also for the sound check, you will hear more details with a headset then using external speaker. The headsets for softphones will also work fine. If you record the prompts with a microphone, observe the following hints:

Known Problems

Howto:Moh and waiting queue files for testing