{"id":20784,"date":"2019-02-12T09:04:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T09:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studio52.tv\/?p=20784"},"modified":"2021-07-17T09:17:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T09:17:28","slug":"a-decade-of-experience-on-audio-recording","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studio52.tv\/blog\/a-decade-of-experience-on-audio-recording\/","title":{"rendered":"A decade of experience on Audio Recording"},"content":{"rendered":"

Studio52 has been supporting enterprises with Audio production services<\/span><\/a> for years. Our main verticals are On Hold messages, IVR (Interactive Voice Recording), and even Multi-language Dubbing. Audio technology has evolved a lot over this past decade and we feel the responsibility to share with you some of what we\u2019ve learned. In this article, we\u2019ll cover some of our favorite Audio recording trends of this decade.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

While IVR technology and Call Centers have been around since the 1980s, things really took a turn on the late 2000s. With important improvements on CPUs, Audio recordings became smarter and cheaper to implement, Windows took the initiative in 2007 adding <\/span><\/span>IVR features to their VoIP Hub<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/a>. This basically made automated audio technology a necessity for a business to compete in the marketplace.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Higher quality recordings<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

More CPU power allowed space for higher quality audio recordings, this was great news for us. There are many aspects to audio recording, none more important than clarity of the message. With fewer limitations and modern codecs, the quality of functional audio files improved significantly. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Today, we have a wide variety of modern codecs. You\u2019re likely very familiar with MP3, it\u2019s been around since 1988. The issue with the MP3 codecs is that it uses a lossy compression method, which means lower quality playbacks. Back then, the need for saving storage space made working with MP3 a necessity. That changed with the arrival of more powerful CPUs, allowing us to use lossless codecs such as LAC, ALAC, and WMA Lossless. These are about three times larger than MP3 files, but the increase in sound quality made it well worth it. If you\u2019d like to learn more about the different modern codecs, Cortney Moore wrote <\/span><\/span>a great piece about them<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/a> on Tom\u2019s guide.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

More intelligible audio recordings allowed a wider usage for this technology. Nowadays you can efficiently gather all the information needed to deal with a client on an IVR system, severely reducing customer service costs. You can even have your possible clients navigate your services to free up your marketing budget. This had a huge impact on mass market services such as banks, hotels, hospitals and more.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/studio52.tv\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/A1.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Another perk of the CPU improvements was the facility to include multiple languages for each message. This solved more than one problem for international businesses, eliminating the need to choose which demographic they would give priority. This was particularly important to big hotel chains and international banks. Our work with Radisson Blu comes to mind. They no longer needed to choose a single language for their On-Hold Messages, so we developed for them this recording in both English and Arabic.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/studio52.tv\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/A2.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

This meant better experiences for both local and international callers. Nowadays most big companies use multiple languages for their recordings. Either letting the customers choose which they prefer on IVR systems or playing them back to back on On-Hold Messages like the one above. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

From DTMF to ASR<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Another huge change for the audio recording industry in the last decade was the introduction to Automated Speach Recognition (ASR). While Dial Tone Multi-Frequency is still a great tool for IVR systems, it can get cumbersome and hard to navigate. Adding speech recognition to the mix meant a whole new level for IVR Systems, user interaction was made a lot more intuitive. Developments such as SALT (Speech Application Language Tags), VoiceXML (Voice Extensible Markup Language), and CCXML (Call Control XML) made it simple and effective to implement.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, this hardly means we said goodbye to the DTMF technology. Not all customers loved the insertion of ASR, especially while it was new and still in need of improvements. Luckily this didn\u2019t present an issue. As we mentioned above, by this time we had a lot fewer limitations. Using both systems simultaneously helped improve the customer experiences, regardless of their preference.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/studio52.tv\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/A3.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

There are many reasons to invest in IVR for your business. We already covered them in a previous publication.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n