Well, I'll give it a shot...

[ltlredwagon]

This site is entitled Voip-info so I thought I would post, although it looks like I might have landed in the wrong universe.
I have a MagicJack phone. About $3 a month, works fine. MagicJack says I can connect my phone to an answering machine. Perfect. But I want to use a professionally recorded audio file for my greeting. I'm not finding any such hardware that enables me to do this. I can apparently upload an audio file to use at Ringcentral -- and pay at least 6X per month what I am paying now. Uploading an audio file to an answering machine seems like it would commonplace in the 21st century, but I can't find such a machine. Do they not exist? Am I just looking at this in entirely the wrong way? Appreciate any comments.

 

[atsak]

I don't think the consumer version of magic jack allows you to upload the message. Instead, you could just play the message through your computer speakers holding the phone up to them, after dialling into voicemail https://help.magicjack.com/faq/support/features-settings/voicemail/ and selecting the greeting you want to record. Low tech hack.

 

[ltlredwagon]

Thanks Atsak. I did try that. Audio quality not very good. Another thought was to buy an old 80s dual cassette answering machine and have a local company put my audio file on the outoing cassette tape. Quality might not be much better.

 

[Halea]

This is what you need in order to do what you described. The Gemini module (white box) is a two way analog line to phone line adapter with player/recorder control. Then you have the cassette recorder/player. You can still find both of them on ebay or craig's list.
The one in the picture was used for over ten years to record our daily promotions when we used to run a family store. The recordings are so much fun to listen to after almost 35 years that we regularly play them back during family gatherings.
Well at least we used to until the covid nightmare.

 

[kenn10]

Well at least we used to until the covid nightmare.

You can always patch it into your PC/Mac and play them during a video conference with family.

 

[Halea]

You can always patch it into your PC/Mac and play them during a video conference with family.

Very true, although it wouldn't help the departed ones because of covid...
Sorry for the knee-jerk reaction, I know it's silly.
You're absolutely right, I should try to use those recordings during calls with the family, especially that most of them are already digitized, as I used them as a music on hold prank on our home pbx a while back.

 

[ltlredwagon]

Thanks Halea! This looks promising. I see one online (attached). I'm assuming callers can both hear my greeting and leave a message. I'll have to figure out the setup. Not sure how I get my mp3 to be the greeting.