Phone message on hold

[twiegman]

I recently downloaded Audacity and used it to create a file with background music and voice to be used as a message on hold. I had absolutely no problem and the finished product was great. I exported it as an MP3 and gave it to our IT department to place on our Cisco phones. The problem comes when they put it into the system. The voice over part is very staticy and the verbiage with a "s" is very hissy. Is there anything I can do to correct this? Perhaps another file format? The problem is it's perfect on my computer, but goes bad when put on the system. Any suggestions?

[alatham]

When you convert a file down to a lower quality, any flaws in the original file will be amplified greatly. So the only way to get it to sound good at low quality is to use good source material and be very careful about what kind of editing you use.

The Noise Removal (use Audacity 1.3.3 for this effect) will probably help you out. Likewise, you need a recording that doesn't have much sibilance in it ('ss' sounds), the best way to get that is to record it properly in the first place. If you can't, you can try filtering down between 4KHz and 6KHz (depending on the speaker), but that really isn't ideal.

What kind of format does the file get converted to in the end?

[twiegman]

All IT can tell me is that it's a Cisco proprietary format specifically for Music on Hold. The problem is it only happens after it's put into the phone system,
so I have no way of determining what's wrong, if anything, during the recording on this end