[CQ-Contest] Improving voice recordings for phone contests

[Pete Smith N4ZR]

Hi Don - I think maybe I should have made it clear that my suggestions 
were intended only, or at least principally, for native speakers of 
English. You're smart to evaluate what works better for you, and then to 
tailor your approach accordingly.

I know it is much harder to slow down, in any language, when you're 
excited. Perhaps you could add some additional recorded messages to your 
inventory, like a "repeat exchange message", for example.  Of course, 
that will be hard in the WPXSSB with serial numbers.  While N1MM Logger 
has a facility for advanced voicing of serial numbers, which adds the 
tens, hundreds and thousands to the bare numbers, I have not 
experimented with those to learn if I can make the voicing as 
intelligible as my own speech.

73, Pete N4ZR
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On 3/7/2013 7:57 PM, Katsuhiro Kondou wrote:
> In article <51388874.1060705 at contesting.com>,
> 	Pete Smith N4ZR <n4zr at contesting.com> wrote,
> 	on "Thu, 07 Mar 2013 07:30:44 -0500";
>
>> Before last weekend's contest, I had a chance to experiment a bit with
>> my voice recordings.  One of the problems I have always had is that
>> when I try to enunciate clearly I always slow down, and the resulting
>> recording lacks the urgency you expect in a contest situation. I also
>> always notice stations whose recorded and live audio don't sound
>> anything alike, and wanted to minimize that as much as possible.
> This may be due to my enounciation, but during the contest I was
> sometimes told by US stations that speak slowly.  So I often try
> to do so intentinally.  And in my experiance, comparing my voice
> with voice keyer, voice keyer gets better callback rate than mine.
> The tempo from the keyer is slower.  YMMV.