Recording delay

Recording delay is the small stretch of time between when a call is answered and when the audio actually starts being saved. It sounds like a flaw, but a short delay is often intentional. The system needs a moment to set up the recording file and confirm the call really connected, and that setup is not instant. The result is that the first fraction of a second may not make it into the Call recording.

In most cases the delay is brief enough that nobody notices, because the first thing recorded is the agent's greeting and a heartbeat of silence beforehand does not matter. It only becomes a problem when the delay is set too long, or when a lead starts speaking immediately, so their opening words get clipped. If reviewers keep mentioning that recordings seem to start mid-sentence, the delay is the setting to look at.

Where the time goes

Some of the delay comes from the steps before a human even hears the call. On an outbound dialer, the system may run AMD (answering machine detection) (answering machine detection) first to decide whether a person or a machine picked up. It also waits on Answer supervision, the signal that confirms the call was truly answered. Recording usually kicks in after those checks, which naturally pushes the start of the audio a little later.

You can tune the delay, but do it carefully. Shrink it too far and you risk capturing detection beeps or partial connect noise; leave it too long and you clip real conversation. The Recording format (WAV/MP3) and whether you use Stereo recording do not change the delay itself. The same gap applies whether recording runs automatically or starts with On-demand recording, so test with a few live calls and adjust until the greeting lands cleanly at the top of each file.