Station announcements

[Tomchatz]

Does anyone know how long the station announcements are in RM, because i cant find timings and it is rather fiddly to make a full announcement work  

[Chrissaf]

I have expanded this reply with extra detail in an edit so that it can become a generic 'How To' for referrals when the question of creating custom 'Station Announcements' gets asked in the future. Which it will, as it has been asked before.

.

In RM, apart from the demo announcements, you create an announcement by stringing together individual words and phrases from a selection of RM samples together in a program. Since you are creating your own custom announcement this way and given that you can include timed pauses between words and phrases, then the overall length of the announcement is a variable time within the constraints of the announcement 'word & phrase' samples contained within the RM sound folder. Unfortunately, the method for creating ambient sounds & announcements as RM programs is not well documented in the manual. But I found it very easy to work out for myself, by opening an example announcement in the RM program editor to see how it was constructed.

.

There is nothing to stop you from creating your own announcements outside of RM, then calling them up from within a RM program. That way you can make your own announcements of any fixed length you want. An externally made announcement can be any audio file as long as it is saved in the .WAV file format.

.

I make my own announcements using a free online text to speech convertor. I copy the written text of the announcement I want to make to the text input field of this web site https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/ personally I have found the UK Rachel voice (in the Premium voice column option) gives a realistic human rendition of the spoken voice announcement for the UK (USA voices are available too). You are limited to using the 'Premium' voices for 20 minutes per day for free. You can also select the speed at which the text is spoken. Within the 'free' option you can also get access to 5 minutes worth of using the High Definition 'Plus' voices. These are incredibly realistic, and in my view cannot be beaten for voices being rendered by a computer, but only limited to 5 minutes use per day for free. I recommend the 'Plus' Amy voice. You can create quite a few announcements in 5 minutes.

.

The yellow highlight indicates how to select the voices to use. The 5 minute use of 'Plus' voices have been selected in this screen shot, with the Amy voice shown selected (ticked).

.

/media/tinymce_upload/797e5689cb1a634b7c4a27c4575f8669.jpg

.

The website only supports downloads of the audio speech rendition in MP3 format, but this feature is not available in the 'free' option. I get round this by using other software on my PC to record the rendered speech live as it plays back. That then gives me the ability to save it in the .WAV file format that RM requires. Freeware MP3 to WAV file convertors are available to download for those who want to use the 'paid for' MP3 download feature. There are also websites that will convert MP3 to WAV via 'upload' & subsequent 'download' of the converted file if you don't want to install freeware.

.

My PC software allows me to record anything heard on my speakers and save the audio in any audio file format I choose. I save as .WAV and then load the file into my WAV file editor where I can start to edit it. I add a realistic level of 'Tannoy' echo and reverberation that one might hear on large stations. This free PC software was bundled in with my 'Creative Labs' sound card. Once I have completed the final edit. I save three versions of the same file. A mono version, a 'Left' channel stereo version and a 'Right' channel stereo version to comply with the RM sound file format. These get saved in the RM sound folder so that they can be selected in the RM 'program editor' to create an announcement that can be called up within RM. Note that I have never lost any of my custom WAV sound files during any RM application updates. They are left intact by the RM update installer.

.

The Creative Labs WAV file editor (WaveStudio 7) may or may not need a physical Creative Labs sound card to be present in your PC. But if the WaveStudio editor won't function on your PC because it cannot detect a valid C.L audio card, then there are plenty of other freeware WAV file editors available to download and install.

.

This link is the download page for 'WaveStudio 7' on the Creative Labs support website. Enter the answer to the 'I am human' validation question and click the 'I Agree' to T&C's button and the download dialogue box should then appear.

https://support.creative.com/downloads/download.aspx?nDownloadId=12583

.

This WAV editor has an option to 'record what you hear' directly into the WAV edit window. However, this feature may possibly need a valid compatible C.L sound card to be present to function correctly.

 

[96RAF]

There is a clock on the RM screen so just play the announcement and watch how long it runs for.

 

I found in the text to speech facility I had to use a minus 2/3 setting to get the spoken word sounding correct, but it is a realistic readback especially if you use sounds like rather than spelt as e.g. Edinbura rather than Edinburgh.

[Tomchatz]

Looking round is seems that most stations use atos anne but i cant find a text to speach for her

[St1ngr4y]

I recently developed a program in VB6 which takes, as a "command line parameter", the text to be announced. I can then use the newly-introduced "Execute" command in a RM program to execute my VB6 program.

 

A while back I added a post to  the "Desirable Features" thread, for a facility for a RM program command to "announce" a user-defined piece of text using text-to-speech.

 

By the way, does anyone know how to download some new UK voices to the Windows (10) text-to-speech facility?

 

Ray

[96RAF]

Ray

Try here but you need to scroll down past all the adverts, etc.

https://windowsreport.com/unlock-new-text-to-speech-voice-windows-10/

 

or here

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/how-to-download-text-to-speech-languages-for-windows-10-d5a6b612-b3ae-423f-afa5-4f6caf1ec5d3

[TrainDriverJ]

Hi Chris and others

By your hard work have you amassed a number of station announcements (ready to go) that you would consider to be useful to other forum members, perhaps generic in nature?

Would you be willing to make them available for others to download and use? I’m sure there would be many interested and grateful members and it would be a great appreciation of the effort you’ve already put in.

[Chrissaf]

So far the bulk of my announcements are just at the planning stage. I have written down what I want them to say and created a working template sound WAV file containing the master sounds for later editing. Even if they were 'ready to go', they are very specific to me and my layout.

.

I do have one announcement (more a sound effect than a true announcement) that is complete and generic enough that it could be used by others (it is suitable for a time period when passenger trains had slam doors). I have put the files in a ZIP and it can be downloaded from here:

.

https://btcloud.bt.com/web/app/share/invite/aLvRaM2lxI

.

When the page above opens, click the file name in the top left corner to open the download dialogue box. The ZIP contains a' Mono' & 'Left Channel' & 'Right Channel' version of the same WAV file.

.

When my other announcements I am working on are 'ready to go' I may update the contents of the ZIP file with any that could be considered generic enough.

.

I am probably making a rod for my own back with this, but within reason and subject to not being inundated with requests from others jumping on the back of your request. I am prepared to have a go at creating the WAV files for you.

.

Just post in text form, the words you want spoken in the announcement(s). Annotate the post with any special requirements such as length of pauses and where they are (if any), and whether you want a female or male voice. Plus perhaps the amount of reverberation and echo you want added i.e none, minimal (branch station for example) or heavy (mainline terminus type station).

.

[TrainDriverJ]

Chris this is a fantastic offer. But I am going to turn it down. The reason is that your time is much more valuable to yourself than me.

 

This was a request for something that I may have wrongly perceived as something you had available after the event and perhaps easily would benefit me and others.

 

With the effort you put into this forum I would much prefer you helping as many people as possible with your time than something that benefits me alone. I will of course gratefully receive anything you consider suitable in the future, if and when you decide, that this project is worth perusing further - as I am sure others would.

[tony_forward]

My platform announcements were recorded on my iPad by my grandaughter. Transmitted via Bluetooth to a small speaker behind the station building. Attracts a lot of comments at exhibitions and works very well. I simply pick the one that is relevant out of 14 options and press play!

 

[Chris Surrey]

I use a text to speech programme to create the announcements, link below, then use audacity to add reverb etc to make them sound like the real thing. These are then linked to the relevant platform graphic so simply clicking the relevant platform sets them off - the train at platform 3 calls at...... etc. I also include them in programs that a will run a train from one end of the layout to the other playing the announcement and any other sounds at the relevant time. The sounds themselves are played through an old stereo PC speaker set which by directing the sound to left or right speaker will play the sound from the relevant location on the layout. And yes, I am a self confessed sad old git of a nerd! 

 http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/