To record a professional voice talent correctly, you must ensure proper audio signal flow from the voice to the final captured digital audio data.

But what is audio signal flow?

Audio signal flow is the path an audio signal takes from its source to its destination. In our case, this is a straightforward path from the professional voice talent through a microphone, into a microphone preamp (often housed within an audio interface), and into the computer, which operates as a digital audio workstation (DAW).

Understanding audio signal flow is essential for any voice professional because it allows you to:

1. Optimize your setup for the best possible sound quality.
2. Troubleshoot any problems that may occur during recording.
3. Get creative with your recording and mixing techniques.

Basic audio signal flow for professional voice recording

The basic signal flow for professional voice recording is as follows:

1. Microphone: The microphone captures the sound waves of your voice and converts them into an electrical signal.
2. Microphone preamp: The microphone preamp boosts the level of the electrical signal from the microphone so that it can be processed by other devices.
3. Audio interface: The audio interface converts the electrical signal from the microphone preamp into a digital signal that can be recorded and processed by your computer.
4. Digital audio workstation (DAW): The DAW is a software program that allows you to record, edit, and mix audio.
5. Monitor speakers: Monitor speakers allow you to hear the audio signal that you are recording and mixing.

Additional devices and processing steps

In addition to the basic components listed above, there are many other devices and processing steps that can be used in professional voice recording. These include:

1. EQ (equalization): EQ allows you to boost or cut certain frequencies in the audio signal to improve its sound quality.
2. Compression: Compression reduces the dynamic range of the audio signal, making it sound more consistent and polished.
3. De-essing: De-essing is used to remove harsh sibilance sounds from the audio signal.
4. Reverb: Reverb adds a sense of space and depth to the audio signal.
5. Delay: Delay creates echoes that can be used to create a variety of effects.

Understanding audio signal flow is essential for professional voice recording. By understanding the different components and processing steps involved, you can optimize your recording setup for the best possible sound quality and get creative with your recording and mixing techniques.

As audio geeks, we’ve been honing our own signal flow for years, both for fun and to improve the quality of our output. We work with a large roster of professional voice talents who’ve perfected their own audio paths as well. This helps guarantee that our IVR recordings, auto-attendant greetings, and on-hold messages play perfectly for our customers.

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Perhaps you never give a second thought to these summaries and how they are generated. But as you scan through page 1 of any of your countless Google searches, Google’s summaries have surely influenced the particular results you choose to click or ignore.

Content Creators Need To Know

If you’re a content creator, you should be interested in how Google determines the search result summary and any relevant links it presents. And if the search result is for one of your properties, you certainly have a vested interest. So let’s learn how Google generates its search results summaries.

Google uses a variety of factors to determine the search results summaries and menu items. These factors include:

• Your query: Google tries to understand what you’re looking for by analyzing your query terms.
• The relevance of the page to your query: Google ranks the pages according to how relevant they are to your query.
• The popularity of the page: Google takes into account how many people have visited the page in the past.
• The freshness of the page: Google prefers to show pages that have been recently updated.
• Your location: Google may show different results to people in different locations.
• Your device: Google may show different results to users on different devices.
• Your search history: Google may show results that are similar to the results you clicked on in the past.

Summaries

The search results summaries are generated by Google’s automatic summarization system. This system analyzes the page content and extracts the most important information.

Links Below the Summaries

The menu items are generated based on the page’s navigation structure.

Google constantly works to improve its search results summaries and menu items. The goal is to provide users with the most relevant, useful, and informative information possible.

Let’s Analyze a Particular Google Search Result Summary

If a user is interested in Marketing Messages’ professional voice services, she might Google:

We presume this savvy user scrolls past the paid ads and reads the first non-paid search result:

Under the heading “Professional Voice Recordings IVR prompts On Hold Messages” is a summary, “Professional voice recordings in over 80 languages for IVR prompts, auto attendant, on hold messaging, and video. Get a custom voice demo!”

However, this exact wording is found nowhere on the page! So how did Google come up with this summary? In this case, Google used the page’s Meta description. In fact, Google used the page’s SEO title for the heading above the summary.

This gives content creators an inside look at exactly what elements Google used for its search result title and summary.

But what about the links beneath the summary – the additional 3 links, “Call Center,” “InRoom Services,” and “Industries”? Google’s algorithm has featured the second, third, and fourth menu item from the home page’s main navigation.

Further Notes on Summaries and Menu Items

• The summaries and menu items may change over time. This is because Google is constantly updating its search algorithms.
• The summaries and menu items are not always perfect. Sometimes, they may not be accurate or complete.

Overall, Google’s search results summaries and menu items are a valuable tool for helping users find the information they need. However, it is important to remember that they are not always perfect. Furthermore, you can’t go in and edit Google’s summaries. Your only control point is your control of your own content that Google indexes and analyzes.

The post How Does Google Determine Search Results Summaries & Menus? appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Delivering healthcare services has become more competitive and demanding, with a strengthened focus on putting the overall patient experience at the center of the healthcare provider’s marketing and communication strategy. Here are some of the ways that professional voice recordings have evolved in support of these important shifts in healthcare priorities.

Transitioning Healthcare On Hold Messaging from Selling Services to Imparting Patient Care Information

Since the COVID pandemic, there has been a growing need for expanding the communication vehicles through which information is communicated to patients that help them to proactively protect and improve their health, especially patients who are older, are afflicted with chronic conditions, and/or live in marginalized communities.

During the height of the pandemic, we saw a huge number of our customers in the healthcare field, from large tertiary hospitals to medical practices ranging from dental clinics to medical specialty centers, come to us asking for new healthcare on hold messages that would help convey vital information in a succinct and comprehensible form.

With more people than ever needing medical information, and the very act of going outside and interacting with others posing a danger, the phone systems became a vital outlet for communicating such information to as many patients as possible.

Guidance and protocols for protecting against COVID were the central priority, but providers also accelerated a trend that pre-dated the pandemic by a few years: focusing less on selling medical services and more on helping the patient through critical and sometimes lifesaving information. Some examples of this practical advice include:

• Recognizing stroke symptoms and getting immediate help
• Preventing falls in the home
• Protecting adults from both tick and mosquito-borne illnesses (for ex. Lyme’s disease)
• Adequately preparing for medical appointments
• Getting vaccinated for COVID, flu, shingles, etc.
• Preventing tooth decay and loss
• Lowering blood pressure

Providing this kind of information serves a dual purpose: 1) keeping patients healthy, and 2) reinforcing the provider’s brand as empathic, caring, and patient-focused.

Keeping healthcare on hold messages current is critical to keeping patients informed.

To be effective in making your healthcare on hold messaging more effective, it is important to continually update the information to reflect new healthcare developments and knowledge and mirror evolving messaging projected by the provider’s other marketing and communications channels. Many challenges patients encounter are seasonal, so most of our healthcare clients update at least quarterly. Marketing programs and communications are often initiated or updated quarterly as well.
Using on hold messages to address the needs of diverse and underserved stakeholders.

As the American population becomes more diverse, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs increasingly take hold, there has been a growing push within the healthcare community to focus on historically marginalized and underserved populations. Many neighborhoods across the country are home to ESL (English as a Second Language) patients, so more and more healthcare organizations are recording their on hold messages in a variety of languages and dialects, or at least including non-English paragraphs within their English Messages-On-Hold programs.

Doing so is a good idea for at least one practical reason. If you are servicing a community of predominantly Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, or Haitian Creole speakers, among others, then you need to offer assistance that has the best chance of being understood by your callers. It is entirely likely that your organization will have to be of help to a patient or patient’s family who does not speak English.

We have also seen firsthand how much more supported patients and their families feel when the voice on the other end of the phone sounds like them. Callers feel much more comforted if they hear a voice that is personalized and empathetic, even if the message is recorded vs. live.

Also, diverse voice talents and professional translators can lend perspective that English-only speakers do not have. They know how to vocalize concepts in a way that would resonate more with native speakers in underserved communities, ensuring that your messaging is heard, and heard 100% accurately.

In addition to offering over 80 languages, we offer English-speaking voices that would be recognized as People of Color. Click here to hear sample demos of our Black and Hispanic voices

Use One Consistent Voice Across Your On Hold Messaging and Auto Attendant/Call Center Systems

In creating a branded, personalized voice that people will associate with your organization, it is a good idea to make sure that the same professional voice artist who handles your on hold messages also voices any auto-attendant prompts or phone-tree recordings that you need. That way, your patients and other stakeholders will be treated to a unified, consistent caller experience that is both pleasant for the customer and brand-building for your organization. If you’d like to hear sample voices across both applications in a healthcare environment, visit our Healthcare Voice Services webpage.

Find Out More

Get in touch with us today and we’ll be happy to discuss the important shift in healthcare messaging that the industry is undergoing. We enjoy answering any questions you might have and developing the best possible on hold messages for your audience.

We’re here to help whenever you need with whatever you need.

Marketing Messages has also expanded into the podcasting field with our podcast division, ModPod. Podcasts are a great tool for spreading the word about your services, your industry, and your organization. If podcasting is something you have any interest in, feel free to schedule a consult with us today.

The post Putting Patients at The Center of Your Healthcare On Hold Messages appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Potential in Onhold Messages: Info Updates

Your business isn’t standing still, so why should your messages? From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, you should keep an eye on your onhold messages because there may come a point where the customer-facing information doesn’t actually match your company’s current status. Employees come and go, hours of operation shift, new branches and locations open, old products are discontinued while new products arrive.

We’ve had customers contact us after years of using a static message, to the point that even they have forgotten what they’ve previously recorded. When we crack open their existing script, they are horrified to realize that their message has been directing callers to customer service representatives who no longer work there, or are advertising products and deals that haven’t been offered for months, or even years.

So before we even begin to consider the matter of onhold messages being deployed more strategically, there’s the simple, practical concern of just making sure that the message you present to your clients and partners actually aligns with your company.

Competitive Concerns

Even if you are happy with your messages, you should keep in mind that your competitors are never standing still. Onhold message work as a cost-effective medium to announce products and product features, including those that are designed to counter competitive moves. If your competitor comes up with a feature that gives them an advantage, and you have a response, an update to your onhold messages is a fast, inexpensive way to get word out.

When you’re putting together your marketing budget, think about new product introductions, promotions, customer information requirements, and competitive activity when considering how often you plan to refresh your messages. If you only refresh once a year, if not even less, than you’re leaving a major resource untapped.

Holidays

There is one very simple reason to keep actively changing up your messages: Holidays. Holidays impact hours of operation; they trigger vacations that affect staffing; they incentivize new deals and major sales events.

Even setting that aside, holidays have a major impact on the mood of your callers. Holiday seasons, especially around the end of the year and Christmas, drive large spikes in phone usage. This makes them the perfect time to cross-promote different products and services.

Something as simple as changing your background music to a holiday theme can do wonders. Besides contributing to the general merry mood, playing holiday music is an audio cue that something is different, which will keep your customers paying attention and engaging longer. In our line of work we have found that Christmas music puts people in a happier mood, and happier people are known to spend more!

Stay Fresh

Whether you are making changes to the message itself, or just playing around with different music choices or a different voiceover talent, there is always potential in onhold messages to provide your customers and partners with a fresh experience. And keeping the experience fresh is an invaluable way of making sure customers and partners remain engaged and attentive.

Contact us today to learn more about setting up your own Messages-On-Hold. And if you’ve already created a message, maybe spend time playing around with our available music and voice talents, and you might just hit upon a new message for a new day.

The post The Value of Keeping Your Messages Fresh appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Your Brand, Your Voice – Personalized Feel in Your Audio

For starters, you will want to choose a voice that matches well with your company’s identity. Whether you need a voice for longer onhold messages or for shorter call center recordings that will address customers with active questions and concerns and direct them where they need to go, you first have to decide what kind of personality you want to present to your customers.

Do you want to communicate steady, unwavering professionalism? Or is it in your brand interest to convey more energy, more pep?

The audio industry has been trending more towards personalization for a while now, and especially in the last couple of years, we’ve seen a marked rise in customers who want their call center greetings and onhold messages to feel more off-the-cuff versus monotonous and atonal. Businesses increasingly optimize creating a friendly atmosphere, but that’s not right for every organization, as we will discuss in just a moment.

Whatever works best for you and your organization, be sure to communicate those needs clearly before the recording takes place. Professional voiceover talent can hit whatever tonal target you desire, but first, you need to be clear on where they need to aim.

Make the Message Match

For many of the businesses that use our services, when they ask for more personalized sound, that means they are looking for a voice that is vibrant, energetic, with a youthful feel. Many of these messages and prompts are devoted to conveying enthusiasm and excitement. Even if the auto attendant greeting is one about a weather closure or regular hours, our clients want their clients to be met with a voice that is bright and endearing.

But that’s not always the case. We have other clients who instead wish to place the emphasis on their authority and longstanding reputation within a given field. These customers will ask for voices that skew older and possess a bit more gravitas. Many of our clients in the healthcare space prefer voices that are calming and project tranquility and ease.

This sort of specificity can be narrowed down not only from company to company but from message to message. The recording used to reassure a customer who has been on hold for an extended period of time should perhaps strike a different tenor than the one that is excitedly greeting a new caller.

One of our recurring customers for a number of years was a children’s hospital using voice recordings for announcements and notifications to patient families. The regular voice talent for this client always made a point of softening her voice as much as possible, with the intuitive understanding that anyone currently using the services of a children’s hospital can use all the comfort they can get.

Know Your Message

Your greetings and messages are a major part of your company’s brand, so your objective should not just be finding a professional voiceover talent to record your voice prompts and messages. Your objective should be to understand what message you wish to send, and craft an audio experience that reflects the image you are trying to convey to your customers, your partners, and your own employees.

If you establish a clear vision for what that message should be, and partner with established professionals who will work with you to get exactly the sound you envision, there is no reason why your audio can’t embody all the best qualities of your business.

Contact us today and we’ll be happy to discuss how we might better create a personalized feel in your audio.

The post Tailoring Your Audio’s Tone appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Why Now?

From a practical viewpoint, the middle of the year is a good time to take stock of what you’ve done so far and what changes might be made to get a stronger response. To narrow our focus to professional voice recordings, we often have customers who leave their Christmas and holiday-themed onhold messages playing well into the year. Even when it isn’t as drastic as playing “Jingle Bells” as background music, even when the thermometer is starting to hit the 70s and 80s, many companies will leave outdated information on their messages, advertising deals and products that are no longer available, or notifying callers about events that have come and gone.

It could be argued that even more than advertising information for new products and opportunities, it is imperative not to put out incorrect or expired information. If nothing else, leaving up out-of-date messaging tells customers right away that your company isn’t as attentive as it could be.

Spread Word Early and Often to Improve Your Marketing Performance

It’s never too early to start getting the word out about whatever deals, events, or opportunities your company will be featuring. We live in a time of information overload. There is always something happening somewhere that demands our time and attention, whether that’s the 24/7 news cycle or our phones providing a never-ending stream of content and distraction. If you think, “Haven’t we done enough to remind people?” the answer is probably, “No.”

There’s no such thing as too many reminders, and there’s no such thing as “too early” to get the word out. Have a major event happening in October? Then the only way to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds is to remind them repeatedly all the way into October, right up to the very day of your event.

That’s why spring is the perfect time to utilize your voice prompts and messages on hold to the cause. Summer is right around the corner, but if you can seed your major events and offerings for the rest of the year early, you can make a strong enough impression to stay in your audience’s attention until the time is right.

Embracing Changes

Whether you are overhauling the entire message, making a few minor tweaks, or simply swapping in a new voice, keeping your messages refreshed is a great way to communicate to your customers and partners that your company is active, alert, and energetic. From the smallest of changes to the biggest of swings, now is the time when your choices and actions can yield a major impact on the final overall performance of the year.

Contact us today at Marketing Messages and we’ll be happy to discuss the ways in which we can improve your marketing performance. And check out our roster of available voice talent and available music, and you just might find the one that will put a real spring into your spring.

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We listen closely to more than we’re aware. Our brains are constantly blocking sounds that our ears pick up from reaching our conscious thoughts because if we did actually listen to all the sounds around us all the time we’d go quite mad. I listened to a fascinating podcast the other week that described this in detail. I’ve provided a link because it was so well explained and you might enjoy the listen too.

Back to audio production’s ebb and flow, and how it’s related to this post. Audio gets recorded. It gets passed through the production department. We listen to it as it arrives, as we process, as we edit, and once we’re done we listen to it one more time to ensure accuracy.

The sound changes each time.

First, it’s raw and imperfect, full of little noises and the occasional false start or complete mistake.

As audio editors we act like the brain does for the ear/mind connection, we find such sounds and remove them. No one wants to hear clicks, pops, static, or distortion in speech when they need to understand the content. We remove all the ‘noise’ and leave only the best bits.

We tighten up the speech here, we add a needed pause there, and we finely craft the perfect voice prompts by whittling down the recording of one of our many professional voice talents into small, precisely named nuggets. Most are .wav files, some are .mp3, and others are formatted for increasingly rare IVR systems that play VOX files.

The playback of each edited audio file is optimized for the system on which it will be used. Some take a 44.1 kHz, 16-bit, mono PCM wav file. Other systems prefer an ITU G.711 encoded wav file. These sound radically different in my headphones on my PC, but in use, as they are designed to be used, they sound just perfect alongside the other digital prompts in the library.

Sometimes I’ll get to hear the same speech in as many as 32 different languages on a given day. This is a fairly rare occurrence, to be sure, but it sure is neat when it happens. Which languages you might wonder? Why so many all at once you may ask? If you really want the details I’m happy to share, just comment below and I’ll let you know. By the way, we’ve worked with over 80 different languages in the past and always enjoy learning to work with a new one.

The post The Ebb and Flow of Audio Production appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Judie is a recent addition to our roster, but she’s been putting her abilities to work for quite a while already. Not only is she a news anchor at GBH Radio in Boston, but she’s also been a professional voice artist for over ten years. She broke into the field with work in the telephony industry, then continued onward into E-learning, long-form modules, and a whole variety of other genres.

When you get as much use out of your voice as Judie does, it quite literally pays to take special care of it.

“I start hydrating first thing in the morning, and I warm up with musical scales before getting into my booth,” she says. She credits friends in the voiceover industry who also have music experience with the advice. “My morning walk in the woods leaves me feeling great, and I want to bring that to my performance. Sometimes I’ll choose a tongue twister and play with the inflection. Lately I’ve been going to a classic from Mary Poppins, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It’s fun and there’s a brightness to it.”

That brightness is palpable in Judie’s performance. She once heard a radio fan compare her voice to silk, while a colleague once told Judie she heard bells in her voice after they collaborated on some audiobooks together.

You’ll Find Judie Outdoors

When she’s not busying herself in the vocal booth, you can often find Judie…well, actually, you have to put in some work to find her. A lifelong lover of the outdoors and a native New Englander, Judie loves being around the ocean, lakes, and mountains that decorate the landscape. Summers find her hiking every chance she gets, and spending hours in natural bodies of water.

As much as she enjoys nature, there’s nothing she’d rather be doing than hopping on the microphone for another round of recording. Voiceover isn’t just a job for Judie. No, it’s a passion and a mission.

“Communication is my calling,” she says. “I enjoy empowering people in ways that could be life-changing and helps them succeed in a personal or professional endeavor.”

Especially when it comes to E-learning and other educational assignments, there is no telling how great an impact Judie’s efforts might have on the listener.

“One of my favorite E-learning jobs was a module on overcoming gender stereotypes in a particular culture so girls could learn how to read,” she says. “I still think about an audio book I narrated that was full of practical tips for people to live a full life after losing their eyesight. Voiceover is about connection, and I get to be the person connecting with the caller on behalf of the client. Marketing Messages gives me a great opportunity as a VO artist, because the writing is so good and brand specific.”

Voice Talents Who Project Friendliness

It is no longer enough for an on-hold message to just be a voice. What customers want, what they respond to, is hearing from, and feeling they are heard by, a real person. Judie is one of our voice talents who project friendliness. She may be a new voice, but she has already proven herself to be an invaluable one.

You can hear Judie’s audio samples, along with samples from all our various available voice talents, on our website.

The post Voice Talent Spotlight – Judie appeared first on Marketing Messages.

A custom closed-for-the-holiday auto-attendant greeting for Easter, freshly recorded each year? Yes, for sure. Countless times.

Dozens of IVR prompts detailing business closures for the Easter holiday, in any of over 80 languages? Yup, I’ve recorded, edited, and formatted thousands of Easter prompts over the years.

Every business should make their operating hours readily accessible, especially around major holidays. I’ve been helping our customers do just that by providing the exact messaging they require, in the voice of their choice (you know, that one voice that just speaks their brand), formatted specifically for their application, well ahead of the event it announces.

Christmas is the most requested time of the year for a change from your usual on-hold music to something that celebrates the season. But there are other holidays to consider as well. We have a lot of patriotic music that’s just right for your June production in advance of the 4th of July holiday. I’ve often hoped a client would ask us to produce a fresh on-hold mix for Halloween, that they’d start on October 1st and run through the stroke of midnight on Halloween, but that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe this year? If you’re interested, I’m ready to mix it.

Now let’s get down to brass tacks. I’ve made hundreds of Messages-On-Hold productions that contain messages about the upcoming Easter holiday. Usually, these are recorded and produced in January or Early February so they can be played for about 5-6 six weeks in advance of the holiday. I’ve just never been asked to use Easter-themed music. I wouldn’t even know what music would make sense for a holiday like Easter that’s celebrated in so many wonderful and diverse ways all over the globe.

I do have some ideas about what I’d use for a Halloween on-hold production though if anyone’s interested.

Happy Easter weekend everyone!

On-hold Dan

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Being present mentally and physically takes constant effort and like all such things that take effort the results make it a worthy pursuit.

When I’m feeling mentally hectic, I like to slow down, sit in a sunny spot, and read. If I don’t have much time, a magazine is a great option because of all the short articles. But which magazine should I read?

Tape Op is a Great Magazine

This magazine checks all the boxes for me because it’s chock full of articles and ads that are focused on my passion, my hobby, and my career as an audio engineer. I’ve subscribed to Tape Op magazine since 2011 because it’s so well written, edited, put together, and altogether extraordinary. Most of the recording gear I’ve purchased since 2011 was selected after a favorable writeup in its Gear Review column. I’ve turned dozens of friends onto the magazine as a fantastic resource but until today I never thought to share it with all of our blog visitors.
I’d like to share today because of one article in particular that I found so wonderful, so profoundly insightful, and inspirational that I think anyone who records audio should read it. I’d tell you about it, but really, you should take some time and read it for yourself.
Mindfulness

How This Factors Into Our Workflow

I read the article and found I had to pause and reflect several times because it was so on point!

We’ve all been there, in the studio, professional voice talent ready, engineer ready, producer ready, client present. In our sessions at Marketing Messages, we work from a carefully crafted IVR voice prompt script. It’s been looked at by all involved parties, iterated over, finessed, and finally approved by the powers that be.

Paper savers that we are, we’re each looking at the copy on our screens. The session begins, the talent speaks, the engineer listens, the producer listens, and the client speaks. “Oh, wait, that’s not the latest version. We made some changes this morning. Can we work from this version instead?”

Game-changer or mere hiccup?

Fortunately, we too practice mindfulness in our sessions. We pause and reflect before recording. We are present and open to acceptance. We do not resist the change but embrace it willingly, finding a way to readily distribute the new version of that IVR voice prompt script to everyone’s unique device. The talent takes a moment to drink water. The engineer double-checks the audio levels. The producer does something magical that no one else understands and the client smiles contentedly. We accept that we’ve been given the chance to record the best version of the latest copy. We smile, we get quiet, and we record the most natural-sounding VUI audio to date.

If you’d like to book a session with us to record your IVR prompts, auto-attendant greetings, on-hold messages, e-learning speech, narration, or more, please contact us.

The post Preparing to Record Your Audio in Studio? Pause and Reflect appeared first on Marketing Messages.