Well, I'm no expert, but I remember reading an article about it a few years ago and it said that computer voice-recognition could still work even with a distorted voice. I have no better justification than that, so I could be wrong.
And as for Archie doing things that are technologically unbelievable, the guy routinely extracts high-resolution images from blurry pixels just by hitting the "enhance" button. The only way he could do something more unbelievable than that is if he got out his old Transmorpher and turned into the Blue Power Ranger again.