Background music

Blueworx Voice Response includes a background music subsystem called the juke box, which you can use to play background music in your applications. This section tells you how to implement background music using the juke box:

To hear what background music sounds like, import the /usr/lpp/dirTalk/sw/samples/juke_box.imp, and then run the sample state table Musical_Welcome. Also, look at this state table to see how it defines music, starts and stops music, and changes the volume.

If the supplied juke box does not satisfy your requirements, you can customize it, or you can write your own background music subsystem. Details are available on request: contact your Blueworx representative.

Why use background music?
Some requests take a while to process: playing background music during such periods can help to indicate to the caller that the application is still working on the request. Your organization may already play music on hold , and your decision to play music during voice applications, and your choice of music, should take this into consideration. You may decide to play neutral easy-listening music that suits the image of your organization, or you may decide to play something related to your latest advertising campaign. Your “background music” does not have to be musical: it could be spoken information about your product, a dialog or interview about it, or even just “keyboard noises”, if you want to make it sound as if the request is being processed by a person!
How many tunes can you play at once?
The background music is played on up to eight background music channels per telephony trunk, while the prompts are played on the regular telephony channels (as shown in ***). Any application can use any one of the music channels, so you can have all applications playing the same tune or up to eight applications can be playing different tunes; one application can play only one tune at a time, but can change from one tune to another.
When should you play background music?
The most common use of background music is to play something while the caller is waiting for something to happen. Playing background music during prompts is not recommended.
How loud is the background music?
Normally, background music is played at a lower volume than the prompts, but the application can determine the volume at which the music is played, and can even play the “background” music louder than the prompts. (Blueworx Voice Response ensures, however, that the combined volume of prompts and background music does not exceed the maximum volume for your telephone network.)
T1 A-law systems
T1 A-law systems rely on the fact that A-law encoded voice can be converted by Blueworx Voice Response to μ-law. If you are using such as system, provided you obey the rule that music segments, elements, or data must use the same encoding law as the other output (voice segments and so on) from Blueworx Voice Response, all will work as planned.
Voice interrupt detection and speech recognition
The echo from background music may be picked up by the voice interrupt detection algorithm or the speech recognition algorithm, causing unpredictable results. For this reason we recommend that you do not use background music with either voice interrupt detection enabled or during speech recognition.
Using the Blueworx Voice Response Juke Box
The Juke Box is comprised of the Juke_Box custom server and two music player programs, pl_seg and pl_elem, used by the Juke_Box custom server
Adding background music to a state table
*** shows a simplified overview of the actions involved in using background music in a state table.
Getting music into Blueworx Voice Response
To use background music, you need music or other audio data in a format that Blueworx Voice Response can use. *** shows some possible sources of music and how to convert your source.

Parent topic: Design topics