[EAS] CAP EAS sent in SF Bay Area Sunday

[Lowell Kiesow]

We in the State of Washington learned the hard way that text to speech is likely to mangle messages.  Place-name pronunciation is problematic and the message needs to be written in a precise way to avoid the problems you had.  Numbers are the trickiest thing.
 
Instead of TTS, we are having the government originators attach audio files, which works pretty well.    There have been some small snags with getting audio parameters right, recording without clipping, and normalizing the final product.   We also recommend the use of semi-pro USB mics and Wavepad for recording and editing.
 
Once they get good tools and some training, we get very high quality EAS audio via CAP.  There is no degredation due to daisy chain relays, bad reception, or narrow band channels, so it is a big improvement over "legacy" EAS.
 
--
Lowell Kiesow, Senior Engineer
KPLU 88.5, KVIX, KPLI, KPLK
www.kplu.org  www.jazz24.org