Creating Text to Voice phone messages 8,000 hz mono

[caswscot]

I’m working on a project at work where we are trying to use Text to Voice to record some of our hold messages rather than having to manually record them on the phone. The system requirements are that it has to be a wav file 8,000 hz, mono in u law (sp?).

The original text to voice downloaded as an MP3. I opened that file in Audacity and reduced it to the 8,000 from 24,000 hz that was there originally and it was incredibly slow and garbled. I increased the speed by 3x and it sounded how I wanted it to. I exported that file and played it off my pc in another audio program and it sounded okay. Once I uploaded it into the phone system however it sounded slow and garbled again like it was playing without being sped up. When I downloaded the file out of the phone system and played it again, it sounded fine.

I’m new to all of this so I have no idea why playing it on my pc would be fine but through the phone system would eliminate the speed increase needed to sound normal.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[jademan]

@caswscot

Any insight would be appreciated.

Try this. Open the original MP3 file.

If it is in stereo, then Tracks > Mix > Mix Stereo Down to Mono.

Click the Audio Setup button. Change Project Sample Rate to 8000 Hz.

And from @steve:

For “8 bit A-Law”:
“File menu > Export > Export as WAV”
then select “A-Law” as the encoding.

(A-Law is always 8-bit in Audacity)

A new Export facility will appear in Audacity 3.4 which will make this a little more straight forward.

[Trebor]

@caswscot

I opened that file in Audacity and reduced it to the 8,000 from 24,000 hz that was there originally and it was incredibly slow and garbled. I increased the speed by 3x and it sounded how I wanted it to.

You’ve changed the playback rate, which has slowed it down by a factor of 3.
Should have changed the project rate, (to 8000), then resampled. Then the speed is unchanged.