Aviavox for railways?

[virgintrain1]

You have probably heard the Aviavox announcements before at most UK airports. It's an artificial voice systems, which rather than just being capable of stitching together pre-recored words and sentences it can also say custom typed messages (Siri style) by having pre-recorded sounds as well as words. It has quite a unique voice although very clear.

Could it be useful the TOCs at stations allowing greater flexibility of announcements and at unstaffed stations allow controllers to type specific instructions ect.

If train crew had the ability to type or select specific messages relating to their train, to be played on the platform before arrival would open so many possibilities and could speed up boarding.

What are peoples thoughts?

 

[Bletchleyite]

While I find the Dutch accent[1] grossly annoying (it's fairly typical Dutch arrogance[2] to consider that it's enough to use a non-native speaker for the English version of the system!) I think it is a very clever system that could indeed be put to good use on the railway.

It's a hybrid between recorded snippets and generated voice - basically it uses recorded syllables for each language, and it is possible, if a particular word sounds weird, to change the syllables used for it or have the whole word recorded.

By the way, the characteristic "bing bang bong" from that (used by both Nederlandse Spoorwegen and Schiphol Airport) is used for manual announcements on Class 700s!

[1] The voice, used for both Dutch and English, is I believe one of the Schiphol announcers, famous for pointing out that "we will proceed to offload your luggage"

[2] Not without reason; most Dutch people speak English better than English people.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you search, by the way, you'll find a few comments on other threads from me about Aviavox and possible rail applications - I've been aware of its existence for quite some time.

I don't believe Nederlandse Spoorwegen uses it, which is perhaps surprising. A number of UK airports do though.

 

[edwin_m]

I was involved with testing the CR4000 trams for Croydon, which were supplied with the PA voiced by a lovely Austrian lady who mangled the pronunciation of many of the stops. Probably not unreasonable for them to expect it was pronounced "Addis-comb" but they could have checked...

 

[RailAleFan]

Operating system text to speech has come on a long way recently - possibly driven by the rise of smart speakers and virtual digital assistants.

The Web Speech API is not the best supported across web browsers but this was a Friday afternoon project I put together a couple of years ago to experiment with automated station announcements using speech synthesis and in that time some OS/voice actor combinations are now very natural sounding.

https://live-departures.info/rail/dsa/

On the latest Apple devices try "Fiona (en-Scotland)" as a voice option for locations in Scotland.

The only phonetic translations applied are for Reading (submitted as Redding) and Heathrow terminals otherwise the text on screen is exactly as passed to the Web Speech API (other than any bracketed component of Darwin reference station names).

 

[Bletchleyite]

That (on Windows) does really quite a good job of doing the announcements from Bletchley, but it has trouble with Welsh names. Oddly it says Liverpool with a very slightly Scouse accent!

 

[JaJaWa]

Doesn’t DLR use text to speech for all of the announcements?

Here in Hong Kong the bus companies use it for the onboard (eg next stop) announcements and it sounds totally fine. It must be way cheaper / easier to set up so no idea why the UK bus companies don’t use it to roll out announcements more widely.

(I suppose they went for it here because Chinese words are formed of characters so it’s incomprehensible from normal speech on the Chinese setting).

Hong Kong Airport and government hospitals use it too but their system rather strangely has what sounds like a very strong Scottish accent which is always a bit of a surprise!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Here in Hong Kong the bus companies use it for the onboard (eg next stop) announcements and it sounds totally fine. It must be way cheaper / easier to set up so no idea why the UK bus companies don’t use it to roll out announcements more widely.

The system fitted to some buses in MK, when it's working, uses text to speech, but it's been done on the cheap so almost everywhere is pronounced incorrectly.

 

[Rhydgaled]

Some stations (including Fishguard & Goodwick, Haverfordwest and Severn Tunnel Junction if I recall correctly) have LED passenger information displays that look like the standard ones but the audio annoucements sound like text-to-speech rather than recordings. Plenty of places were pronounced wrong though. It doesn't just read out the text displayed on the screen exactly because it adds something like "this service is operated by" between the list of calling points and the TOC name; unfortunately the TOC name for GWR on the screen is/was "GWR service" which makes sense when seen on the screen (because "this service is operated by" is not displayed) but the announcement ends up saying "this service is operated by GWR service" which just sounds daft.

 

[jha4ceb]

Church Stretton's audio announcements sounded like text-to-speech when I was there last week, including a bizarre pronunciation of 'Manchester' (with emphasis on the 'ches'). Not clear to me why this would be preferred over the usual systems as it sounded obviously worse.

I think Gatwick Airport's departures area must have this system too, because when I was last there it was announcing flights to 'Nice', pronounced as it would be in "nice cup of tea".

 

[Bletchleyite]

Gatwick and Luton both use Aviavox, if I recall correctly. It's fairly distinctive due to the Dutch accent and the "bongs". Pretty sure Ee'throw does too. Stansted is I think a silent terminal.

 

[Edders23]

Gatwick and Luton both use Aviavox, if I recall correctly. It's fairly distinctive due to the Dutch accent and the "bongs". Pretty sure Ee'throw does too. Stansted is I think a silent terminal.

never noticed it in the arrivals areas at LHR or Gatwick so maybe only certain areas

I do think though that even if they used an English voice they would probably get it wrong as they do on many railway related DVD's it always annoys me that Essendine on the ECML gets pronounced "Essendeen" when the correct pronunciation is "Essendyne" and quite a few others

 

[Bletchleyite]

I do think though that even if they used an English voice they would probably get it wrong as they do on many railway related DVD's it always annoys me that Essendine on the ECML gets pronounced "Essendeen" when the correct pronunciation is "Essendyne" and quite a few others

The advantage of Aviavox is that it's really easy to fix this sort of thing as you don't have to re-record, you can just change the syllables it uses for that word.

 

[WestCoast]

Not entirely sure it’s text to speech but I prefer the system they use at Spanish airports....to say the the English voice is commanding would be an understatement;

.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's not Aviavox - but that voice is quite similar to the classic LU "mind the gap" voice, isn't it?

 

[Bletchleyite]

A couple of interesting Youtube videos about Aviavox.

The official promo:

And KLM's staff training video showing how it is used (and also giving an insight into operations at Schiphol prior to the security swaparound):

 

[virgintrain1]

Not entirely sure it’s text to speech but I prefer the system they use at Spanish airports....to say the the English voice is commanding would be an understatement;

.

That's brilliant he definitely needs to stations.