AAUG Reviews

By Carlene Brown, AAUG Member
Reviewed 12/05

While I was preparing a review for PhoneValet, Parliant announced it was releasing a new upgraded PhoneValet Podcast Bundle. I was asked if I would be interested in reviewing it also. I have never done any Podcasting, but being from the school that believes “if you think you can, you can”. I said sure I’d give it a try.

After discovering the Podcast Bundle consisted of three separate applications I became a bit apprehensive. I need not have been. My experience with Parliant has proven they produce some of the most user friendly products on the market and also provide excellent user guides, tutorials and support.

PhoneValet Podcasting Bundle consists of 1) PhoneValet Message Center, your telephone assistant,; 2) BIAS Peak Express 5, an audio filtering and editing software; and 3) SoundSoap 2 VST version, a noise reduction and restoration software. All three are highly rated and recommended products.

A PhoneValet Podcasting Tutorial is furnished on the
Parliant website,
which also includes a link to BIAS for a SoundSoap 2 QuickTime movie download.

First, I recorded a telephone interview using PhoneValet’s recording capabilities.
Next, I made a copy of the sound file and imported it into Peak Express 5, where I was able to edit out what I didn’t want in the conversation. Then using the SoundSoap Plug-in I learned how to teach the program to recognize the unwanted noise in the recording i.e, hiss, clicks, etc. and reduced them. After I was satisfied with the audio I saved it, dragged the file into iTunes and converted it to an AAC format. Then it was ready to be uploaded to a Podcast site. I didn’t upload mine for actual Podcasting but did make it available to family members.

Note: my audio “clean up” was not done to perfection. This will take more experimenting and experience to get it to a point that is acceptable to me,
It will also require more time to become acquainted with the other editing features available in Peak Express 5. But the process of converting a telephone interview into a useable Podcast is relatively simple and the results are good. .

Requirements:

• Mac G4 or G5
• OSX 10.3.9 or later (10.4 recommended)
• QuickTime 6.5 or later
• 256 MG RAM (512 recommended)
• 80 MB available free disk space

Parliant’s Podcat Bundle, including PhoneValet, BIAS Peak Express 5, and SoundSoap 2 sells for $249.95. Purchased separately the products would cost $400.00, making the Bundle a good deal for Podcasters who use telephone interviews in their ‘casts. Existing PhoneValet 3.0 customers can upgrade to Podcast for $74.95.

If you are currently podcasting or thinking of becoming a podcaster and telephone interviews are part of your program, I highly recommend that you check out Patliant’s PhoneValet Podcast Bundle. PhoneValet. Peak Express 5 and SoundSoap 2 combine to provide an excellent tool for creating and processing broadcast-quality audio.