Best way to record voice mail?
 

Hello folks,
I had some guy do the voice mail greeting for my home office phone number and played it off my computer speakers into the phone's speaker. However, it sucks....lots of background noise even though I try to make it as quiet as possible.

Does anyone know of any better ways to get cleaner audio or even audio directly into the phone's speaker? What about pressing a headphone into the phone's speaker?

Just wondering how it normally is done.....thanks.

Depending on your phone, you can sometimes tap into the phones earphone connection. Run that into your recorder. Earphone jacks are very common on cell phones, but some cordless land-line phones have them, too.

Buddy

Use a good pair of headphones like the Sony 7506, (maybe you can borrow a pair from a friend) hold one cup against the phone's mouth piece and play back the audio at relatively low level. It will be a very clean transfer. I do this a lot when I need to preview something I am working to a client over the phone.

something like this unit - http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2104040 will give you decent results, providing you can dial into your voice mail from a landline.

JK Audio - InLine Patch. It connnects between the telephone and the wall jack and gives you a stereo line level output (among other I/O), with the line on the left channel and the telephone mic on the right channel. It is a very fine product for recording telephone commmunications.

I actually recorded a voicemail of a cell phone with a senn MKH 50 pointed at the ear piece of the phone (in a quiet room). Came out sounding pretty good - sounds like its from a phone, but it fits the mood.

I did need a lot of gain on the mic pre, but the 722 didn't let me down.

Guys,
I purchased a $15 stereo from Radioshack today and used it to playback the audio from my MP3 file into the phone's speaker.....man.....bad idea. Coudln't even get it to play loud enough so the phone can pick it up.

Scratch that idea.

I'll try the other ideas you guys had. Thanks!

I think what Nick wants to do is send a recorded voice into his phone, not take anything out of the phone. He apparently wants to record this voice onto his phone's answering greeting, to be heard by those who call him.

A phone that had a headset jack might do the job. The headset has a microphone and plugs into such a phone. If the voice coming from the computer's audio output could be matched in its level to a mike output and the connections adapted to fit, this might work. Perhaps the computer output could be re-recorded onto some audio device that could be better at facilitating this transfer. The phone's output circuit to the headphones of a headset, might be ignored in the headset jack. A line connection with an attenuator might allow the audio output to be brought down to a mike-output level or the headset jack might not be very fussy about the level of an input. Play around with combinations of these ideas and a solution might be found.

You need to send a line level out down the phone line. Make up a little patch cord from a piece of telephone cable and a spare mono mini-plug and a couple bucks worth of parts from Radio Shack. You need a 600 ohm transformer, part 273-1069, a 0.1 micofarad capacitor and a bit of perf board to hold them. Connect the green wire in the phone cable through the capacitor to the end of one of the windings on the transformer and the red wire to the other end. Use a bit of audio cable to connect the plug to the other winding. Use a "Y" jack like you use for an answering machine to connect it and your telephone to the wall. Plug it into your headphone jack or line out on your playback recorder. Call your voice mail service and rock and roll.

As Dan Brown mentioned "JK Audio" is the company for this kind of problem, most of their products are designed to interface pro audio with telephones. I have used their "That 1" many times to put professional voices on various voicemail/ACD systems.
see here - http://www.jkaudio.com/that-1.htm. I believe there is something similar from Radio Shack but you get what you pay for.

The In-Line Patch also has a "send" input with level adjustment knob that allows you to couple any line level source into the telphone line.

The JK Audio products are perfect for this kind of work, and they are reasonably priced too.

Agreed, a commercial phone patch is better - but for a one time deal, $10 at the Radio Snak is hard to beat

symetrix used to make a good phone interface. they no longer make them, but they show up at reasonable prices on ebay from time to time.