phone patch recording

Stefan Chinell · **Voice Talent** Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 16

Yes another variety, you have preamp and mixer as two separate units. And what unit do you use to feed the playback/line out into the phone line so the client can listen at his end?

Yes Behringer is cheap...

Colin Campbell · Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007, 12:15 (GMT) Post subject:

Not sure I understand the question. The key to what I am doing is using a small mixer at the OUTPUT of the PC. It mixes the live mic, the PC's output and will (when I get around to it) the caller all into my headphones. The main output of that little mixer is free to FEED the phone line. The caller would hear the same things I do in my headphones.

Stefan Chinell · **Voice Talent** Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 16

Just like to know what unit you have between mixer OUT and phone line since usually you need some kind of cable adapter and transformer to eliminate interference hum. But then of course US phone systems may be different from European. Just curious! Smile

)

Stefan Chinell · **Voice Talent** Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 16

Just remembered, Europe has AC and US has DC and that way you can feed directly without hum? Good for you then!

Colin Campbell · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007, 08:47 (GMT) Post subject:

http://www.jkaudio.com/

Joe Whistler · **Voice Talent** Joined: 11 Jan 2007 Posts: 15

Judging by the number of views this post has generated, there is a lot of interest in the how-to's of phone patching. I recently answered another user's post on a very similar subject by providing a couple of diagrams as to how the "patch" integrated into a "typical" voice recording chain.

http://www.voiceoversavvy.com/download.php?id=315 shows a diagram of the discreet segments of the recording chain. At the top: a direct chain from mic --> preamp --> Audio Interface <--> Computer/Workstation.

The bottom half of this diagram shows the discreet phone patch chain.

The second diagram link http://www.voiceoversavvy.com/download.php?id=290 shows the two discreet segments now integrated.

Hope this will help.

Frank Frederick · **Voice Seeker** Joined: 29 Dec 2006 Posts: 142

Although this is redundant, the simple way to describe the use of a PhonePatch is to think of it this way... your phone line goes into a little box, which sepeartes incoming signals (audio) from outgoing signals.

There are also connections on this box, to and from your mixer. Record the output from this box into a track in your multi-track software for reference.

Your higher quality audio from your microphone should be recorded on another track. This audio is also sent back to the box (and your client) through the mixer. Audio from your PC may also be routed to the box, through the mixer.

Now on to the 21st century. Skype and VOIP can and does work for phone patch capabilities. There are several ways create this scenario with programs (for Skype) like: Skylook www.skylook.biz/, Pamela Call Recorder www.pamela-systems.com/, and MX Skype www.skyperec.com/.

Using VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) professionally with broadcast quality audio, is not a really difficult problem. Alhthough early adoptees of VOIP did have problems realted to bandwidth and loss of digitized audio packets, for the most part this has been remedied - in the professional world through things like NAT Transversal, IP Tunneling, and Virtual LAN's.

Today you have programs such as the aforementioned AudioTX Communicator www.audiotx.com/ which has the capablitity to use both IP communiction and ISDN connections, Source Connect from Source Elements www.source-elements.com/Source-Connect/, Digital Musician Link www.digitalmusician.net/, and soon, iSpeek www.ispeek.info to emulate the capability of the previous known commodity - ISDN codecs - without the horrendous costs.

A PhonePatch allows you to listen and hear direction via the low quality POTS phoneline while recording. A talent would record on his.her side, edit, then send the file to the client.

An IP or ISDN codec allows for both sides of the "session" to record broadcast or better quality audio, in real-time via the internet. Thus, your client can record your voiceovers at their facility - while you are doing it - and have good enough quality audio to use for broadcast or better.

Hope that helps.

Toodles

Frank Frederick
"The Voice" tm

Colin Campbell · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007, 18:15 (GMT) Post subject: