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RE: How do they record the actors for voice response systems
Subject:RE: How do they record the actors for voice response systems From:"Downing, David" <david -dot- downing -at- Fiserv -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 3 Apr 2009 08:54:31 -0500
From: "Lippincott, Richard" <RLippincott -at- as-e -dot- com>
Subject: RE: How do they record the actors for voice response systems
[snip]
One of Connie's talents (and thus the reason why she got the job) was
her ability to speak in a constant tone so that when the system would
play back a number using her snippits, it sounded reasonable...yet not a
monotone, either. She could also be consistent enough so that prompts
recorded literally years apart would still sound as though they were all
done on the same day.
----------------------------------------
I've gotten a number of interesting replies about the *mechanics* of
these systems, but I'm afraid nobody has quite addressed the specific
point I was looking to have addressed -- although the above paragraph
comes close.
I was thinking most of the messages from the phone company that recite
phone numbers. What has impressed me is that they approximate natural
intonation to the point of having the intonation be *different* for the
first and last digit of the phone number. Connie was able to use a
*constant* tone of voice so that the end result sounded reasonable, but
the messages I'm thinking of actually go so far as to have intonations
that *vary* in line with natural intonation -- e.g., to go down on the
last digit and "straight across" on the others. I was wondering if
anybody knew specifically how that was accomplished.
David Downing
Senior Technical Writer
Credit Union Solutions
Fiserv
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