[Asterisk-Users] English vs American voice files

[Steve Underwood]

Bill Seddon wrote:

>My wife has been recording the text published on the wiki.  A couple of
>questions for you:
>
>1) One of the recordings says "please enter the full 10 digit number
>starting with the area code".  Any opinions on whether this should be
>changed for the UK and, if so, to what?
>
>2) The recordings seem "dull" on playback even though we are recording using
>a good quality microphone with matching impedance.  Initially we recorded
>using 16 bit/8K sampling on the basis that this is what is required by
>Asterisk but that was really terrible.  So we're sampling at higher rates on
>the basis that we can use sox to change it as necessary.  Any thoughts on
>what we can do to make the recordings sound "sharper"?
>  
>
You can't have have sharp sounding voice over the telephone. Telephone 
calls really do sound dull. We are so used to them, we tend to blot that 
out of our perception. You can record at a higher sampling rate, and 
then convert to 8K for final use. However, once you convert to 8K it 
will still sound dull. You might use an equaliser to pep up the 2.5kHz 
to 3.5kHz area a bit. That might make the perceived quality a little 
better. Don't expect miracles, though.

Regards,
Steve