Decent-sounding Answering Machines for Outgoing Music: Recommendations?
May 31, 2002 at 9:14 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 5

scrypt

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This might seem a strange question, but has anyone found an answering machine -- digital or analog -- that reproduces music reasonably well without forcing the caller to listen to endless beeps after the message? Is there a digital answering machine that's capable of playing back music?

There must be at least one AM that is available now and has sound quality comparable to cassette tape.

I miss being able to play music and excerpts from strange films on my outgoing message. Current digital AMs can barely reproduce a single voice without munchkinization. More complex sounds can't be reproduced at all.
 
Jun 6, 2002 at 12:40 PM Post #2 of 5
About a year ago, I found a Panasonic dual-cassette answering machine at a store next to Canal Dev. It was the last one they had. The machine sounds great but I'm afraid I don't know where you'll find it these days.

It seems like every major manfacturer likes forcing consumers to accept low resolutions for DIY recording equipment. That's why we're sitting here talking about minidiscs in 2002.
 
Jun 6, 2002 at 7:13 PM Post #3 of 5
actually it is not the answering machine that limits the fidelity of the audio but the receiving end , the telephone.
Have you ever had a person call you up and say
"Hey , you just gotta hear this new CD I picked up" and when played on the phone sounded like pure crap ?
 
Jun 6, 2002 at 10:20 PM Post #4 of 5
Rick is right. The telephone is limited to 4 KHz. Digital phone lines is 8 KHz sampling and 8 bit resolution and sometime the phone companies will even steal some of the bit.

Digital answering machine also compress the data or record at even lower resolution to save memory.
 
Jun 7, 2002 at 7:31 AM Post #5 of 5
Quote:

Originally posted by dvw
Digital answering machine also compress the data or record at even lower resolution to save memory.


I believe that your "even lower resolution" is probably what Scrypt's complaining about. I bought a dual-cassette specifically because my outgoing music sounded unrecognizable on the crap digital Sony I had before that. I mean, I understand the quality isn't going to be decent. But callers should be able to make sense of the message. A theme from Mahler's Ninth Symphony should be recognizable to people who know the piece.

Right now, I have organ music from Carnival of Souls on my outgoing message. I couldn't do that if I were still using that stupid Sony.

Working with music engineers and graphic artists for years has taught me that, when going from a high to a low resolution, it's important to limit the number of times a source is re-digitized, and also that the source should be as high-res as possible. That might be why cassette answering machines make more sense sonically than digital ones.

A rock producer I sometimes work with insists on recording basic tracks through something retro (in his case, a George Martin Neve with Massenberg automation going into a 24-track analog reel-to-reel) and *then* transferring the recording to ProTools. I know it's overkill to talk about an answering machine in those terms, but maybe the principle is the same.

Same thing with a scan going into Photoshop at 1200 dpi to be edited and then bumped to 72 dpi for a web page, right? The important thing is to input the image at the highest resolution before compressing it.
 

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