messages on hold recordings?

S

Spider

New member
perhaps a fairly simple subject for some but i have to record an 'on hold' telephone recording for a government medical department here in Oz and i know it has to sound perfect.. so i was wondering if anyone knows of anything i should look out for? Im presuming compression will play its part ? I havent actually ever recorded anything like this , well i spose ive recorded speeches!!(ZZZZzzzzz) Im not real well up on phone systems so what is the best medium to have the final copy on ? also is 16 bit stereo ideal for best quality?
I went for a job at a place called 'messages on hold' and they were just recording using mini disc and mixing down to a cassette tape. But they also had there own players they sold with the job, im not real sure how these worked but basically i believe they played a loop of the recording.
Does anyone know where i can get hold of music that is able to be played to the public , ive heard it refered to as 'production music', i call it elevator music.. I dont want to even come close to any copyright infringements..Well any help would be much appreciated, cheers..
spider
 
I'm not sure what your asking here? do you want to record music for 'on hold' or do you want to find some 'pre-recorded on hold music'? What are you asking here?
 
P.S. anything you play over the phone sounds like 'real audio' anyway..real bad..so truthfully, it doesnt need to sound alll that great. But just make it sound as good as possible and you'll be fine.
 
I came close to getting into on hold music about 10 years ago ... back then I think the machines had a cassette bay which you placed the master in, but then you copied the tape onto it's internal hard drive (or maybe it was just onto a memory chip ... no moving parts) which it actually looped to play over the phone. That was a while ago ... I'm sure technology has caught up a little more ... they're probably at least CD based now.
As for music ... there's tons of music libraries available (which is another good business venture for a studio/songwriter). Usually you either pay an up front free or "needle drop" ... which is a royalty everytime the song(s) are broadcast. Here's a link to a place that sells
on-hold specific music ... on the cheap and royalty free.
http://www.ahernstore.com/music-on-hold-royalty-free-music-cds.html
A more in-depth search would probably yield many more results.
A thought, though ... you can charge a ton more money for custom music (corporate suits just love to hear their company name in a song)... just a thought. :)

Good luck.
 
Message on hold

Many business phone systems still have a cassette based system (put a cassette in the bay and down load the audio into the memory). Newer systems may use CD or mini disk media. Be aware that different message systems have different time loops which will dictate how long of a message you can record. The most common recording trick is to use side chain compression to bring the music down when the vocal talent speaks. Good luck.
 
well thanks for that everyone , much appreciated.. Well all i suppose i would need to do is fade in and out some contempory music (thanks for the link Big K) with some voice talent in between, sound pretty simple actually.. And like amyth mentioned , sound over the phone isnt all that of 16 bit stereo.. I spose just the frequency range is limited..
So that link you posted Bigkahuna , once u buy one of the cd's does that mean you can use it countless number of times on different recording? Does anyone know of a link in australia?? just $30 seems a bit steep to ship one cd across the world , well maybe not .. Well ive looked at a few different players , but they only seem to have 4 lines , im sure this company has about 15 lines and i want the messages on hold to operate from all the phones ... this shouldnt be too hard should it?? im yet to have a looksy at what phone setup they have... well cheers all for your help..
spider
 
what about compression on something like this , is it just a case of using it for the same reasons as you would normally?? or can a radio type voice effect be created using compression ?? itll probly be a female voice so it shouldnt be too louder voice ... well cheers all...
 
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