Early voice loggers recorded telephone conversations onto analogue magnetic tape and later digitised audio recordings using a codec. Our client represents a major international bank that is looking to recover RACAL Wordnet, NICE and Dictaphone Guardian call data from their 4mm DDS tapes and copy this to hard disk drive.

These recordings are created in a proprietary format that is specific to the hardware and audio encoding method. Hence they can only be played back on the original equipment, often one call at a time. Given that each tape stores upwards of 10, 000 calls and the hardware and media is aging, our client is finding it increasingly difficult to support the system on behalf of the user.

Our engineers are working on a solution to extract the call catalogue and audio data from the voice logger and tapes. The catalogue typically contains metadata such as time, duration and extension number, whilst the audio data is the actual voice recording. Given the compatibility of most modern files, the client is looking to ‘future-proof’ voice logging by standardising their systems. In order to import this legacy data into the new system, files must be extracted and converted to .WAV format.

To date we have completed a number of ad-hoc data recoveries from WordNet, NiceLog and Guardian systems. In this instance we are looking at a quote for a bulk recovery from thousands of tapes. This will include an excel inventory of the voice logger media so that there is an index of calls that can be sorted by any field. We are also looking at a feature to search or analyse the actual voice recordings for specific keywords, although this is likely to be more difficult.