[EAS] Text To Speech issues

[Dave Turnmire]

In my continuing education on Text-to-Speech issues, we had an Amber 
Alert yesterday that my DASDEC truncated due to excess length. Closer 
examination indicated that the Text-to-Speech engine on the SAGE ENDECs 
used by our LPs and NOAA Weather didn't have this problem.

Turns out the core issue was that our state's CAP server provider by 
default puts the same text in the "description" and "instruction" 
fields.  That simplifies things for emergency management, but leads to 
problems down stream.  One EAS decoder I'm familiar with (no longer on 
the market... and for good reason) uses only the "instruction" portion 
for their TTS.  The SAGE appears to use only one but I'm unclear on 
which at this point.  The DASDEC uses both... which in this case wasn't 
helpful, but as I read the ECIG CAP-to-EAS Implementation Guide, is the 
required approach.  I don't know what TFT, Gorman Redlich,  or other 
decoder manufacturers do.

Has anyone here observed this issue?  Can anyone (ideally... 
manufacturer reps) comment on how TFT and Gorman Redlich's boxes handle 
the "description" and "instruction" fields?  Or know which one the SAGE 
uses?

 From what I can see, this isn't just an academic question.  If a 
decoder makes use of BOTH of these fields, then obviously the time 
duration is longer than if only one is used, possibly a problem. And if 
you use only one... which one?  If you pick the wrong one on the 
originator side, then some of your audience gets no useful audio.  And 
if you do what presumably was the intended use... with somewhat 
different content in each... then it is an additional training issue on 
the origination side... and the audience misses part of the message for 
those listening to decoders that don't use both fields.

Thanks for any insight you can provide

Dave