Improve audio quality

I have been using the software for some time and it has been working well. There are two issues I am hoping you can help me with:

1- We have recorded several voice messages to be played. Your software would only accept 8-bit recodings which are very “tin-like” and have a lot of background noise. I tried both the the Sound Recorder in Windows XP as well as Audacity, both produce noisy 8-bit recordings. What do you suggest we do to improve the quality of the recordings?

The audio format: PCM 16KHz, 8bit, mono is the standard phone audio. Any other format must be converted to this format in order to be played over the traditional telephone network (PSTN). The noisy part is usually not related to the 8 bit format, but to your recording equipment and environment. Our sample message is recorded in a professional recording studio and it does not contain any background noise. For more information on recording, please see audio FAQ.

2- We use a combination Voice Recording and TTS in our messages. Our contacts complain often that the TTS segment runs too fast and becomes un-intelligible. How can we slow the TTS down? Does BBP accept other TTS software? Thanks

Yes, the best solution is to have a better TTS engine. Voicent software accept any SAPI compatible TTS engine (most of the commercial ones are). When getting the TTS engine, try to get the 16Khz voices. You can also save money by getting a single-channel, none-server TTS engine since multi-channel features are impleted in Voicent TTS Plug-in already.