Recording and Voice Talent  For:    Radio & Television  -  Telephone  -  E-Learning  -  Video Game Voices

Voices     Clients     Staff     F.A.Q.     Rates    Contacts    News  
 

News

Everyday we hear them. Voice prompts that guide us through billing systems, customer service cues and e-learning courses. For the most part, we never take time to think about exactly whose voice it is that we're hearing. We simply want to know if this month's payment went through, why TSN is blocked out on our cable or what steps are needed to add a spreadsheet to a PowerPoint presentation.

It may surprise you that a remarkable number of these voices representing some of the largest companies in the world are coming out of a modest studio in uptown Saint John.

Gary Chase operates the Voice Factory. Year after year, his business supplies an ever increasing number of clients with vocal talent for use in telephone voice prompts, e-learning courses and video games.

The Voice Factory is a testament to the efforts of former premier Frank McKenna's program of providing New Brunswick with a state of the art digital IT infrastructure. Today Chase provides voices for the world, but that wasn't the original intent.

"We started back in 1981 with Epcom Communications. We were primarily a music studio and produced about 100 albums. We were also using our recording studio to record occasional voice-overs for corporate clients. Eventually we started seeing that as home recording equipment became more accessible we were recording fewer and fewer artists while at the same time, our corporate work was really starting to grow." Chase explains that this all led to a turning point in 1988, where he decided to take the company in the direction that would be the basis for his business over the next 20 years.

"The Voice Factory was actually a name for a project and someone suggested it'd be a good name for a business, for some reason we hadn't actually thought of tha,t but we agreed that it provided an accurate description of what it is we do." He credits one of his earliest corporate clients with giving him the confidence to try something different and promised to work with him as they began developing a new voice prompt system.

"This company was an evolutionary thing. We'd been working with corporate clients for voicers and jingles, but when NB Tel called us things really changed. They called us and said they needed 250,000 voice files for the new voice prompt system and those guys were just great. They would send engineers over to work with us and we figured it all out together." In fact, that one project would prove to be the foundation of how Gary Chase conducts the majority of his business, a process called concatenation, which, according to the dictionary is "the state of being connected, as in chain." To pioneer NB Tel's new voice prompt system ("for service in English, press "1" now") Chase was required to record independent phrases and words that when joined as a series or order with each other would come together to form complete phrases or instructions. The Voice Factory now uses the very technique learned 20 years ago to help today's computer, phone or bank user navigate menus and prompts.

Now Chase names well known companies like Norton Antivirus, Aliant, Telus, Bell and Equifax among his ever growing clientele. He has been able to provide voice content in English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese and Portuguese for use in training materials, commercials, interactive voice response, e-learning and video games all over the world.

Chase cites two homegrown factors as the keys to his success, technology and people. "What really made this happen for us was the investment that Frank McKenna put into this province in terms of making us completely digital. It worked to help attract a lot of companies like Xerox and all of those call centres but it really helped a local business like the Voice Factory be able to do business with anywhere in the world. The other thing that makes this work, and I can't stress this enough, is the fact that I have a talent pool of about 40 voices," he said. "These are people that can read in different languages, some can do character voices and they're all great. About 50 per cent of this pool comes in weekly, even daily and the rest vary by demand. My talent can drop in at the drop of a hat and give me what the client needs with a very quick turnaround time."

That turnaround time has reduced significantly since the Voice Factory began operation. Now taking advantage of the Internet, Gary Chase and his production manager John Dykeman can have instant turnaround of voice files for his clients.

"We record the files to a computer and then John uploads them to a website. We give the client a password and they can go there to retrieve the file. We've had occasions where the talent is doing the read while the client is listening on the phone. They'll suggest changing something or punching a certain word. We'll ask the announcer to do that and the customer will ask when the changes will be available. It's fun to say, check the site, they're up there as we speak." The process is far more streamlined than when he started doing this 20 years ago.

"I can remember 20 years ago making trips around town with stacks and stacks or reel to reel tapes. I'd have to take so many to the local radio stations, so many to the post office, another pile to the courier and another stack to the bus. This is much, much easier." Using the Internet to send voice files has meant the opportunity to broaden his offerings. Voices from the Voice Factory can now be heard giving embarking instructions on British Columbia's ferry system and in major sporting venues like Philadelphia's Wachovia Centre where Chase was presented with one of his more unique challenges.

"(Basketball star) Yao Ming was coming to play against the 76ers and we got a call requesting some announcements in Chinese for all of the fans that'd be coming to see him play and they needed them within 24 hours," he says.

It's the quick requests like this that Chase enjoys because he knows he needs to move fast and that he's built up enough of a stable of talent to give him the confidence he can meet his deadlines with a quality product.

"That's when it gets fun. I'm on the phone, e-mail, Facebook, you name it, tracking down talent." While Chase knows a good voice when he hears it, he admits to having little to no experience in Cantonese and Mandarin.

"That's when we reach out to the Chinese community.

"We have some wonderful interpreters who can listen objectively and let us know if an accent is too regional or the voice isn't good. We really trust their judgement because they've helped us find good voices in languages we need to be doing business in." In the end, the Wachovia Centre got their voice, Yao Ming played his game, fans got to appreciate the proceedings in their native tongue and Gary Chase conducted business.

The regional accents he spoke of come into play in many of the languages that he provides voices for, including English.

Twenty years after starting the Voice Factory, Chase has seen huge changes in how he delivers his product and now conducts business on a global scale. While the technology has grown by leaps and bounds, he notes the process hasn't really changed since NB Tel approached him with a project two decades ago. "We don't do it on tape anymore, but we're basically doing the same thing we started with as the core of our business. We record short phrases that come together into thoughts, sentences and paragraphs. We do one thing and we do it well." The next time you're doing phone banking, taking an e-learning course or playing a video game, think about the voice you're hearing. While the software company that made the game may be from across the globe, the voice you're hearing may be from around the corner.