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Frequently Asked Questions (Part
6: Voice Modem & Dialing) Laptop and external modems Dialing and Call Quality Others A voice modem is a device capable of playing and recording audio over a telephone line. Modems are originally made for data or fax communications. These modems cannot be used with Voicent software. A voice modem is usually identified as a Data/Fax/Voice modem. Please note that supporting V.90 or V.92 data transmission standards does not imply your modem is voice capable. A good indication of voice capability is the inclusion of voice mail software in the modem package. We only support Voicent 3025 Data/Fax/Voice PCI modem.
Voice modems are used to make regular (voice) telephone calls. They are used to connect your computer to telephone lines. Starting from release 6, in addition to using voice modems, you could also use Skype (VOIP service) to make phone calls. For details, please see: 2. How do I know whether my computer has a voice modem or not? If you are not sure whether your computer has a
voice modem or not, just go ahead with Voicent software
installation. The software will inform whether your computer has a
voice modem or not. 3. How do I check what kind of modem my computer has? Click the Windows Start button, select Control Panel. Select Phone and Modem Options, then select Modems. Also check the Multimedia options under Control Panel and pull down the "Audio - Sound Playback" list. If you do not see your modem listed there, your modem or its driver do not have voice capability. 4. I got a "Failed to detect a voice modem" window. What's wrong? If your computer does not have a voice modem, you will see the Failed to detect a voice modem dialog window. Voicent software cannot continue without a voice modem. Click on the Purchase a Voice Modem button for instructions to get a supported voice modem. 5. I purchased a supported voice modem, but the system still could not detect a voice modem. What should I do to correct this? After you have installed the modem hardware and its driver, you can check your modem installation by the following steps: 1). Click on the Windows Start button, then select
Control Panel.
If in step 5 the driver provider is Microsoft, then your driver installation is not correct. The default Microsoft driver does not support voice. Please click Update Driver button to install the correct modem driver. 6. Do I have to use a Voicent 3025 modem? Not necessarily, although we strongly recommend using a Voicent modem. There are many voice modems are known to work with Voicent Software. However, we have not tested these modems thoroughly. We do no support these modems and you are at your own risk if you use them. If you would like to purchase a modem from your
local retailer, please choose Zoom 3025c PCI data/faxvoice modem. You can
search amazon.com for zoom modems 7. How can I mute the modem dialing sound? Click on Windows Start button on the bottom left of your computer screen, select Control Panel from the menu, then select Phone and Modem Options. Click on the Modem tab, then select the installed modem, click on the Properties button. Click on the modem tab, set the Speaker Volume to the Off position. Click OK. 8. Does Voicent support multiple phone lines? Yes. Voicent products support multiple phone lines through installing multiple modems on a single computer. The number of phone lines supported depends on the number of available PCI slots on the computer motherboard. Most computers have 2 to 4 PCI slots available. Please see 19. Where can I get desktop PCs that have multiple PCI slots? 9. I have a laptop computer. What kind of voice modem should I use? Since the supported modem is an internal PCI voice modem, it cannot be installed on a laptop computer. Many external voice modems are known to work with Voicent products; however, these modems depend a lot on the quality of your laptop computer. In general, using Voicent on a laptop is less reliable and tends to have poor call quality. If possible, use a desktop computer. An old Dell desktop computer, such as those based on Pentium III, is a far better choice than most laptop computers. If you have to use a laptop computer, please choose a
USB based voice modem, such as Zoom 2985 USB modem. If your computer
does not have a USB port, you can try Zoom 3049 Serial port modem, or
Zoom 3075 PC card modem. You can get these modems from your local
retailers or
search amazon.com for zoom modems 10. Can I use an external voice modem? You could but it is not recommended. External modems are easier to install on a desktop or a laptop computer. However, these modems are not only more expensive but also less reliable than internal PCI modems. Test it fully before put the system into real use. Warning: Zoom 3049 external modems do not work with Intel Pentium 4 Hyperthreading (HT) machine. A future driver might fix the problem. 11. Why some laptops work and others don't? This is related to question 8 and 9. Technically, in order to make Voicent software work on a laptop, there must be enough IO bandwidth between motherboard and external modem, and there must be no interrupt conflict. Sometimes the laptop power settings affect the modem reliability also. Many external modems use the computer DMA channels and COM port for playing and recording telephone audio. The bandwidth of these channels, along with bandwidth of USB or PCMCIA ports, are fixed by your computer motherboard and hardware standard. If the motherboard of the laptop does not provide enough IO bandwidth for playing voice, there is nothing the Voicent software program can do to solve the problem. If your laptop has an interrupt conflict related to playing audio through an external modem, your laptop computer will crash and see the Windows blue screen of death, complaining about DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. It is harder to change IRQ numbers in Windows XP. In summary, there is not much you can do if Voicent software cannot be used on your laptop. You can try a different laptop or a different kind of external modem. Only when you find a good configuration will the software work. Desktop computers do not have these hardware problems. So the best solution is to use a desktop computer with an internal PCI voice modem. An old desktop computer is far better a choice than most laptops. 12. I do not hear modem dialing and I get a message "Will Try Again: Line Occupied". What's wrong? This message usually means that the line your modem is using is occupied or in use. For example, when the modem line is shared with a regular phone, and someone is making a call using that line, then the modem will not be able to dial out. If your modem line is not in use, please check the following: 1. If you are using the product for the first time, make sure your phone line has dial tone. Use a spare phone and connect it to the modem PHONE jack. Your phone should work normally even if the computer is turned off. You can use the phone to test the phone line to see if it works or not. When you use a regular phone line for the software, please make sure to plug one end of the phone cord into the modem jack marked LINE. Plug the other end into a phone jack (the wall jack where you normally connect a phone). If you use a phone line that also has broadband connection like DSL, please make sure you don’t connect your modem to the wrong jack that belongs to DSL connection. If you are using VoIP, you need to connect the voice modem LINE jack to a Voice Terminal/Adapter such as Motorola VT1005. 2. Please make sure your phone line is a regular analog line. The modem will not work with a digital line. Most residential phone lines are analog. If you are behind a corporate PBX box, make sure to get an analog line, like the one used by a fax machine. 3. Make sure you have a supported voice modem. Please refer to other questions in this section. 4. Please also check the dialing rule - whether to add 1 for long distance calls or remove local area code in a ten digit number. In some area, a ten digit number is used for local calls. To set the correct dialing rules, please select Setup --> Options from the Voicent Gateway main menu. 13. The calls work except on my voice mail. I get the message "Will Try Again: No Answer". What's wrong? First please check that your phone line is not noisy. It is a little tricky to handle voice mail for any software programs. With so many voice mail systems out there and so many different voice mail prompts, it is impossible to make the detection 100% reliable. For example, if the voice mail prompt is too long, the system might timeout before playing any message. The Voicent product has been tested on a wide variety of answering machines and voice mails. If it is not working on your system, please do the following: 1. Click on Voicent Gateway icon to invoke the
gateway main window 14. The modem dials but my phone does not ring. Why? First check your modem line as stated in question 11. Then check your phone number and the dialing rules of Voicent Gateway. In certain areas, you have to dial 10 digit phone numbers for local calls. In that case, you do not want the gateway to automatically add 1 to the numbers. A dialing rule dialog usually pops up automatically if the phone number you entered is going to be different from the number actually going to be dialed. You can check the actual phone number in the Voicent Gateway log file. It is under c:\program files\voicent\gateway\logs\output.log. Looking for line that starts with "Making call ... <phone number>". If you are calling to your cell phone, sometimes the cell phone station might be too busy to connect your call. The missed call does happen regardless whether the call is from the Voicent program or a live person. 15. I am using Voicent modem. Why am I still experiencing long delays at the beginning of some of the calls? First check your telephone line to see whether it is noisy or not. If it is, there is not much the system can do to improve it. For example, if you are using a VOIP service, you might experience this problem. Second, if you are calling a cell phone and the cell
phone happens to be in a poor reception area, you will have these
problems. Cell phone service might drop calls or even miss the call
altogether. Again there is not much the system can do. The other thing to check is that your recorded message does not start with silence. Use a wave file editor, or Sound Recorder, to remove the beginning silence. To make sure it is not something else, you could turn on the "Record initial dialing" as described in question 12. Listen to the generated pickup*.wav file. If it is not noisy in these wave file, please send them to support @ voicent.com. To ensure your message is delivered, you could use the confirmation feature. 16. I have a voice modem but have experienced many problems using the software. Why? The quality of your voice modem has a huge impact on the call quality. Many factors determine the modem voice capability, including the supported features of the hardware, the availability of onboard DSP, the quality of modem device driver, and the quality of the sound card of your computer. Some voice modems do not support standard voice device driver interface even though they claim to be voice capable. If you have this type of modem, the program will malfunction when making phone calls. If that happens, please switch to Voicent modem for guaranteed performance. If you have a poor quality voice modem, especially the so called "soft modems", you may experience the following problems. 1) There is a long pause at the beginning of the audio message. The best solution is to get a Voicent voice modem. 17. Why is my phone line noisy? It is important to have a phone line that is not noisy. A noisy line makes voice detection less accurate and might cause long delays at the beginning. There could be many reasons a line gets noisy. You should at least check that:
1) All line jacks are firmly plugged in. 18. Does it work with Windows Remote Desktop (RDP)? Yes. But you have to set up your connection options correctly. From the Remote Desktop Connection dialog, click the 'Options >>' button, then select the Local Resource tab. Set the Remote computer sound to "Leave at remote computer".
If this option is not set, then Voicent Gateway can make calls but will not be able to play any audio over the phone. 19. Where can I get desktop computers that have multiple PCI slots? New computers have less PCI slots than older models. It gets even harder to find a new machine that supports Windows XP. If you have to use Vista, then you need to use Skype to make phone calls) New Dell models: Dell Precision T3400 has 3 PCI slots and support Windows XP.
Here are just a few examples of older models:
2 PCI slots: Dell Dimension E520, E521 You can also search google or look for local computer shops.
More than 4 PCI slots: contact your local computer store that can
build customized computers with a special computer motherboard, such
as those supporting 8 PCI slots. It is usually cheaper to get 2
computers with 4 PCI slots. |
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If you are using a laptop, you can purchase CreativeLabs Blaster
v.92 DE5671 USB voice modem. We do not offer external modems or UsB
modems.
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