Vrs vco

adamlogan

adamlogan

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I'm just wondering, what VRS service provides the best VCO (that's Voice Carry Over) experience? I'm HOH and prefer to use my voice when speaking for myself, but really appreciate the benefit of having an interpreter. I miss less and don't have to ask people to repeat themselves so often this way.

Please note, I don't want a VRS war in here, please be respectful and try to be somewhat objective.
 
adamlogan said:
I'm just wondering, what VRS service provides the best VCO (that's Voice Carry Over) experience? I'm HOH and prefer to use my voice when speaking for myself, but really appreciate the benefit of having an interpreter. I miss less and don't have to ask people to repeat themselves so often this way.

Please note, I don't want a VRS war in here, please be respectful and try to be somewhat objective.
Click to expand...

I'll be both objective and honest. If you wanted the best quality for VCO, Sorenson VRS is your best bet. However, if you wanted to hear the person respond back to you, then the Z5 Desktop is for you. I hope this helps somewhat.
 
You might want to look into Captel instead of VRS.
 
It depends on the hardware you use. really... I am not kidding. Right now the Z20 from ZVRS is the easiest and fast way to use VCO. The plus side is being able to navigate the voice navigated options that require you to press keypad. With Z20- I can just simply pick up the handset ANYTIME in the call, it doesnt matter if I received the call or I called out. I dont have to tell the interpreter that I want to use VCO and FYI- some terps have to explain it to the end caller that I want to use vco with incoming call every single time and its AGGRAVATING!!!! Its NOT THE END CALLER NEED TO KNOW. they can tell if they hear my voice and all I want is to be able to use vco at ANY given time . it doesnt matter in beginning a call or middle or near end. With calling out with ANY VRS, I can ask to use VCO and I have an option of using my cell phone, a friends, cell, or a landline or inline that is now built in the newer standalone VP's.
To tell you the truth - using inline VCO is kinda like a conference call and it doesnt feel natural - no privacy as you are using the VP microphone. Inline VCO on smart VP and ntouch VP works identical and no quality difference, at least its appears to me. Still waiting on ipad tablet to come in and I'll be able to try out the VCO on a wireless connection. I expect to have problems due to latency - we will see.
 
I'm looking at that angle too- 2 way VCO is what I'm looking at- I know Purple has both 1-line and 2-line VCO. Sorenson seems to only have 1-line.

Captel is an option but many times the captions are horrible- misspellings, entire words missing, garbage in- garbage out kind of thing. Of course this is also true with interpreters as any human would have a hard time hearing whomever is speaking (heavy accents, low volume talker, speed talker etc).
 
DeafDucky said:
I'm looking at that angle too- 2 way VCO is what I'm looking at- I know Purple has both 1-line and 2-line VCO. Sorenson seems to only have 1-line.
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Do you KNOW what 1 and 2 line vco means?
Reason I ask is because you said sorenson seems to have 1 line. Are you sure? which sorenson are you referring to? ntouch pc? ntouch vp? vp200? Ntouch vp indeed have 2. :cool2:
 
DeafDucky said:
I'm looking at that angle too- 2 way VCO is what I'm looking at- I know Purple has both 1-line and 2-line VCO. Sorenson seems to only have 1-line. .
Click to expand...

I'm confused - a "2 way VCO" means "two way voice carry over", which would just be a normal hearing phone call.
 
OK so maybe I am confused. Please educate me.

What I had THOUGHT it meant was that "1 line" was just speaking to the hearing person while "2 line" was ability to speak to and hear the other person.

(I was looking at nTouch PC- and other VRS PC software more than the VP (such as nTouch VP, SmartVP, Z20 etc) because I only have wireless and cannot do a hardwire ethernet connection- unless I snake a long assed cord from this room to the Mac computer lol)

Apparently I'm wrong :P . Trying to find info that clearly explains how both works is a pain in the patootie.

What I was looking for (aside from the comment above that "it's just like a normal hearing voice call" heh...) was the ability to speak to the caller/called person and to hear them while also being able to see the ASL interpreter (since I'll still miss a butt ton hearing anyway).

I am not trying to be a dumbass here- I'm trying to learn all of this, would appreciate the help.
 
ok - I can understand why you are confused. Its the VRS industry way of labeling things. Not your fault.

1 line VCO means use the device microphone for using your voice to talk to the hearing caller. You just talk like you are in a conference call.. nothing to hold to your mouth to speak into. It can be awkward if you are not used to it. takes time getting used to.

2 line VCO mean you already have a cell phone or home phone or company phone you rather use to talk into a handset. In order to make this work - you MUST either enter your VCO number in your VP settings or give it to the terp and the terp will call your voice number first before making the call to a hearing person if you are making the call out or before continuing the call if you received the call ( the latter is aggravating way).


Hope this helps.
 
DeafDucky said:
...
aside from the comment above that "it's just like a normal hearing voice call" heh...
Click to expand...

You might not appreciate the definition, but it doesn't make it any less correct. **shrug**

"VCO" is short for "Voice/sound carried over a phone line".

A 2 way VCO phone call by definition is a phone call in which (only) sound is both sent and received. By extension - it's a "normal hearing voice call" - either using a standard or amplified telephone.


Honestly if you're looking at something where you are able to speak, listen and see the conversation you should look into different VCO carriers (using text, not ASL). Some carriers do a better job of speech to text than others, and sometimes the garbled text isn't actually the RO at all - it has to do with a poor phone line (signal getting garbled).

Some phones and relay services also have an option for VCO where the speaker's voice is able to be heard as well - which would allow you to listen and read the other side of the conversation and still speak yours.
 
Anij said:
"VCO" is short for "Voice/sound carried over a phone line".
Click to expand...

Huh?! umm.. no.
VCO = Voice Carry Over..


Another thing I forgot to add to my comments, with line 1 for vco, you are using your internet bandwidth with audio part so it takes away the available bandwidth for video upload/download part. This is important for those who don't get 2M upload or have poor internet speeds and depends on VP for calls. If you fall in this category of poor speeds, just don't use line 1 vco. use your cell phone or landline phone. You know you have poor internet speeds if your video is blurry all the time, no matter who you call to- relay, p2p, etc.
 
radioman said:
Huh?! umm.. no.
VCO = Voice Carry Over..
Click to expand...

We just said the same thing. I just elaborated for clarity.

A '2 way VCO' would be both parties speaking their conversation.
 
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radioman said:
ok - I can understand why you are confused. Its the VRS industry way of labeling things. Not your fault.

1 line VCO means use the device microphone for using your voice to talk to the hearing caller. You just talk like you are in a conference call.. nothing to hold to your mouth to speak into. It can be awkward if you are not used to it. takes time getting used to.

2 line VCO mean you already have a cell phone or home phone or company phone you rather use to talk into a handset. In order to make this work - you MUST either enter your VCO number in your VP settings or give it to the terp and the terp will call your voice number first before making the call to a hearing person if you are making the call out or before continuing the call if you received the call ( the latter is aggravating way).


Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

:ty: I appreciate it. An interpreter friend of mine also explained it. She used to work for CSDVRS (later ZVRS) then moved over to Purple for a few years before she left the interpreting field (I don't think she is interpreting anymore- partly due to health issues) so she gave me some good advice/pointers. Also got some info from another friend who does use VCO (and using bluetooth or DAI cord) with VRS. Still hoping to get up there to see her set up...

I may wind up trying both ways as I do have a cell phone- just waiting on a new DAI cord (and if VR ever gets back in touch with me for the HAs...).

thank you again RadioMan :). I see that I'm going to have fun trying out the different ways to see what works best for me!
 
DeafDucky said:
:ty: I appreciate it. An interpreter friend of mine also explained it. She used to work for CSDVRS (later ZVRS) then moved over to Purple for a few years before she left the interpreting field (I don't think she is interpreting anymore- partly due to health issues) so she gave me some good advice/pointers. Also got some info from another friend who does use VCO (and using bluetooth or DAI cord) with VRS. Still hoping to get up there to see her set up...

I may wind up trying both ways as I do have a cell phone- just waiting on a new DAI cord (and if VR ever gets back in touch with me for the HAs...).

thank you again RadioMan :). I see that I'm going to have fun trying out the different ways to see what works best for me!
Click to expand...

DeafDucky-- I am looking at my ntouch PC settings right now, and I can say with certainty that it does, in fact, have 2-way VCO, but it has to be enabled, though. Hope that helps.
 
Here's the picture-- corrected at last.
 

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ChicagoBlue2 said:
I'll be both objective and honest. If you wanted the best quality for VCO, Sorenson VRS is your best bet. However, if you wanted to hear the person respond back to you, then the Z5 Desktop is for you. I hope this helps somewhat.
Click to expand...

Sorenson don't have own one line for VCO and how you know it was best quality? Have you tried VCO?
 
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