{"id":1971,"date":"2016-02-23T09:23:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T14:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/?page_id=1971"},"modified":"2025-02-20T16:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T16:52:18","slug":"exclusive-the-profile-of-the-voice-of-audix","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/features-and-virtual-exhibits\/exclusive-the-profile-of-the-voice-of-audix\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: The Profile of the Voice of Audix!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Welcome to AUDIX. For help at anytime, press<\/em> star-H. Please enter your extension and pound sign.<\/em><\/p>\n

Default AUDIX Login prompt<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In part of the continuing series of the early history of modern day Avaya PBX systems, you humble curator had actually reached out to the \u201cVoice of Voicemail\u201d, Lorraine Nelson. I would like to thank her for her cooperation with the project.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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\"image<\/a><\/p>\n

Image courtesy from voicelady.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This investigative project is mostly the background to the voice behind the legendary voice mail system, that has been branded AUDIX (the acronym known as Audio Information Exchange), Intuity, Modular Messaging and smaller systems like Partner and Merlin Messaging. Technical information or specific dates or years is not part of the narrative because she doesn\u2019t have that information. Regardless, the early days of the enterprise voicemail system has some interesting history in itself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Despite her claim to fame, she was not<\/i> the first voice of Audix.\u00a0 According to her, a woman with a Texan drawl (the person\u2019s name is unknown) had done the prompts for at least Release 1. The Bell Labs team wanted the voice to sound more New York, however they didn\u2019t know where to go. Hey I wouldn\u2019t blame them too. In the world of business, if you had a Texan (or heck someone from the West Coast) giving you prompts, would you go asleep or a loose a prospective customer? Especially when a product of AT&T was about to evolve into the competitive marketplace during the time Divestiture?<\/p>\n

A man who had once worked on a Bell Labs project of a system with an A\/V interface that could bridge such equipment in various rooms or classrooms through a telephony system; was tasked to find the voice.\u00a0The said project is believed to never gone to market.\u00a0This\u00a0manager called a film producer in the Yellow Pages and asked he knew any voice over talent. The film producer had recommended a radio talent to the Bell Labs manager. They spotted a radio news reporter in the Denver market who worked at KADE in Boulder, then KADX going by the name \u201cLauren Hendricks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the illusion of multiple personalities (read below), the woman they found would be<\/i> Lorraine Nelson.<\/p>\n

(On a sidenote: I guess name spoofing wasn\u2019t just isolated to the world of\u00a0Shadow Traffic<\/span><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Metro Networks reporters<\/span><\/a>! I never understood concept of a same voice, but\u00a0 different names on different radio stations \u2013 thought it was always a slap in the face to the listening audience\u2019s intelligence.)<\/p>\n

Editorial aside, this was probably the best move. A native (and now a resident again) of Connecticut, as she told me where she \u201cgrew up to speak properly!\u201d who also studied at the University of Colorado with a Communications major \u2013 not the<\/i> telecommunications, but in the radio, TV scope. She met their crieteria \u2013 but could she pull it off?<\/p>\n

\u00a0After the discovery and making the decision, she would arrive to a frugal Bell Labs factory, with low end technology with no quiet place to record since this was a manufacturing plant. Not only that, apparently AT&T could\u2019ve paid her a little better for such an enormous task.<\/p>\n

\u00a0How come? What they had was a reel to reel tape deck in a cubicle, and apparently according to her they wanted to mimic (in her words) a \u201ctelephoney\u201d sound. Because of this low tech practice in a dark time in the 1980s; people didn\u2019t like the voice, and it felt too quick or abrupt. They gave her another chance to re-record the fragments this time they didn\u2019t over direct her. By this time she interjected her own personality (and\u00a0from seeing that other video<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 this would explain the \u201cnicest secretary\u201d vision.) This seemed to help according to Nelson and kept it for Audix 1 and 2 (again released in mid to late 1980s most likely.)<\/p>\n

Despite\u00a0publicized peer reviewed reports on the System 75 in January 1985,\u00a0<\/span><\/a>with developers touting the design of the human in mind, the Audix team apparently didn\u2019t have the interests of the users in the beginning according to Nelson.\u00a0 She would record nearly a thousand<\/strong>\u00a0prompts (known formally as \u201cfragments and menus\u201d) into the phone at the factory after the work day ended there and had to go through each one and dial it in to be able to record, enter the fragment number, press a command to playback, and if it didn\u2019t sound well to hit a command to rerecord. She was annoyed at how she would record it without any problems, but the system would cut off part of her speech.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Essentially what she did was no different than a customer getting root or Administrator access to the system and basically change the voice prompts, because in modern voice mail systems if you dislike the voice over you could in theory rewrite their voice. (If only I could get those 100 prompts to rewrite my Asterisk box it would be so awesome!) In the early days, there was no studios, no MP3, WAVE or AIFF PC\/Mac based files; this was a simple rewriting over the voice of that Texan woman by logging into a telephone and press buttons to do the overwrites.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Because the AUDIX history (at least in the mid 80s) is hard to find and hardware probably been vanished from Earth (and thank you Avaya for destroying your historical collection!) I could possibly speculate how they would reproduce the new voice on newly produced systems. I can imagine that the new AUDIX became test machine for the new voice in the shop; perhaps take a backup of the new voice and just insert them into the new systems and do it over and over\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 since afterall she was recorded this first version on the shop floor. (And phone systems, mind you, don\u2019t get reproduced often like PCs, like making thousands a day. A lot of times, these specialized systems would be made specifically for their customers near the time of purchase.)<\/p>\n

Reflecting this primitive procedures, one would consider the production or development of this system as a glorified answering machine despite the very high rich, expensive nature of the equipment. First thing I compared this to today\u2019s standards was, if say a friend with a good voice you wanted on your answering machine, and he recorded it on an MP3 send it you and play it off a BlackBerry. (I did this before we moved to a new house and use the service provider\u2019s voicemail.) Or even 25 years ago if you wanted friend to record a quasi professional recording on a micro cassette player for you on those other tape based answering machine.<\/p>\n

She would come in for changes over time including additional work for Lucent (by this point) recorded with enhancements to AUDIX, a faster pace, voicing over for two commands per prompts (oh I mean \u201cfragments\u201d and \u201cmenus\u201d) and provided the voice for the Partner Messaging and Merlin Messaging (mid to late 90s) as well and even the IP Office in the last decade. And by this time it was more professional and was recorded digitally as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0She is still strong and active, and still heard by millions (including your humble currator,\u00a0when his mother occasionally misses a call made by me to her office set<\/span><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Note: Many thanks to Lorraine for her cooperation, answering and the prompt response through email. If only there would be more people that could send meaningful email within a few minutes, it\u2019s a rare exception.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to AUDIX. For help at anytime, press star-H. Please enter your extension and pound sign. Default AUDIX Login prompt In part of the continuing series of the early history of modern day Avaya PBX systems, you humble curator had… <\/p>\n

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