Voice Announcement Files

The Voice Announcement feature in the second generation MOTOTRBO radios allows the user to hear pre-recorded voice announcements whenever they perform an operation (e.g. changing zones, channels or pressing a button). The voice announcements are pre-recorded files which are converted by the CPS and loaded into the radio.

Since we are not talking of Hifi quality here, these files are stored by the CPS (and loaded into the radio) as .mva files with μ-law (pron: mu law) with: 8 bits per sample; 8 KHz sampling rate; mono and less than 160kb (approximately 20 seconds).
Since this format may not always be available, you have the ability to point the CPS to a .wav (Windows Audio) file with: 16 bits per sample; 8 KHz sampling rate; mono and no bigger than 320kb. The CPS will convert .wav into .mva automatically.
To avoid issues with distortion, the audio level should be around -16dB with peaks no more than -4dB. There is sufficient memory in the radio to support a total of 500 seconds of Voice Announcements. This equates to approximately 8Mb of .wav files.

A selection of professionally recorded Voice Announcement files, is included with CPS version 7.6 and later. These files can be found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Motorola\MOTOTRBO CPS\voiceannouncement - the recordings are in English. If you need to customize these, you can approach the company who produced them: GM Voices.
An excellent sound recording and editing tool is available on the internet for free, called Audacity. Using this software; a good microphone and a (ad-hoc) recording studio, you can create your own Voice Announcement files.
The secret of good quality sound is the microphone. You should try to use a studio grade microphone. Computer headsets (particularly these) and stage type microphones are not the best choice. The microphone you choose should be unidirectional. The recordings should be made in a quiet room which is furnished. The furniture ensures that there is no (or little) echo.
It’s a good idea to make some test recordings to see if they sound okay.

All MOTOTRBO radios with firmware version R02.xx.xx support Voice Announcement. Radios with firmware version R01.xx.xx cannot be upgraded to R02.00.00 or any version R01.xx.xx.
To load your recordings into the radio, connect the radio to the PC via the USB programming cable. Start the CPS and click on Device, Manage Voice Announcement. The CPS will interrogate the radio so therefore the radio needs to be turned on and the driver needs to be installed.
If all is in order, a Manage Voice Announcement dialog box appears. The Voice Announcement files in the radio and PC (on disk) are automatically displayed on their respective lists. You can point to your own  Voice Announcement files by clicking on Browse choosing the folder and clicking Refresh.

 
Once the files are selected, they can be loaded into the radio by pressing the Load To Radio button.

Once loaded into the radio, you can start to assign Voice Announcements to specific events - the radio’s codeplug needs to be read for this.
 
The Priority setting defines what priority the Voice Announcements have over radio traffic and other alerts. It is also possible to assign Voice Announcements to channels, Zones and, in Linked Capacity Plus, sites.