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Old November 13th 06, 01:46 AM posted to uk.transport.london
James Farrar James Farrar is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jun 2005
Posts: 905
Default Piccadilly Line Automated Announcements

On 12 Nov 2006 16:10:36 -0800, "Jonathan Morris"
wrote:

Boltar wrote:
Why did the redo it anyway, was it because of the T5 extension?
Surely it would have made more sense to use a speech synthesizer
anyway instead of digitised audio,then no re-recording necessary.
Just type in the new phrase and you're done. Its not like they sound
like Speak & Spell these anymore so why arn't these systems used?


Because if you listen to the 'man' at Kings Cross, you'll see that
there are good systems and bad systems.


It depends where the breaks between phrases are. The problem is that
the breaks between fixed words and variable words aren't where real
people naturally breathe. So instead of a natural "this is a
Piccadilly line train / to Cockfosters", you get a very
unnatural-sounding "this is a Piccadilly line train to ///
Cockfosters", unless the person doing the recording is told where to
breathe.