The Siren Board

Do you happen to have any up-close vids of them running the ASC mechanical siren recordings?

They are pretty customizable, one is pointed in some weird directions due to it being very close to a 9 story hospital.

I do not have an up close recording of one with the Tempest recording. I have a video from my house a half mile away, but not up close. I will try to get one during next months test, but I need to check my schedule to make sure it allows.

This is the distant recording...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omo8_hKxPpA You can also hear some 2001's in the distance.

Cool! I commented.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Oa ... 41061.html This news report shows a VERY small clip at the beginning of it running the 8 port siren.

No, this was before they made the change, the siren you hear in the news broadcast is just canned audio. The first time the siren recording was used was the first Tuesday in December.

I'm a bit late to reply, but let me add my 2 cents here.

First. regarding what uncommonsense said about voice intelligibility. From the 3 types of electronic sirens I've heard, the E-Class had the worst intelligibility. This is a test? Try "Thith ith a teth". An EOWS 1212 with an upgraded controller actually had the best intelligibility, very crisp and clear voice. The I-Force came in a close second.

Back on topic. This must have been VERY recently as I was in Oak Lawn 2 weeks ago and didn't see it. It's good that they added a siren downtown. Here's a visual of what Oak Lawn's coverage looks like now. You can see they need 2, maybe 3 more to have complete coverage. I'll bet we see a siren pop up at Oak Lawn High School within the year.

Notre.Dame1003 wrote:I'm a bit late to reply, but let me add my 2 cents here.

First. regarding what uncommonsense said about voice intelligibility. From the 3 types of electronic sirens I've heard, the E-Class had the worst intelligibility. This is a test? Try "Thith ith a teth". An EOWS 1212 with an upgraded controller actually had the best intelligibility, very crisp and clear voice. The I-Force came in a close second.

When I read people saying ATI's voice intelligibility is not bad, it really surprised me. NotreDame, your analysis is more what I expected since you have 4 100W drivers oriented 90º apart dumping into a narrow center channel...and all that audio has to go through a reentrant horn before emitting out. To me, it sounds like a recipe for distorted disaster...so many waves bouncing off or otherwise canceling each other.


I also would imagine pumping that T-128 sound through those drivers would dramatically shorten their life given the low pitch and complex audio form (and this is operating under the assumption the recording has been properly passed on the high and low frequencies). There's nothing inherently wrong with ASC's default tone set, so I don't get why they're not using it.

But I'm also not an audio engineer or emergency manager, so what do I know?

In my opinion, they probably should've kept the 2001s. Seems like they would've covered the entire city.

They should have kept the 2001's and added 1 more to the far south end of town. That area didn't exist when the old sirens went up.

I'm not 100%, but I believe the 2 main reasons they chose a siren recording over stock tones was 1. that's what residents wanted. People said they "want the old siren back." 2. it was just a matter of swapping 2 message chips at each siren, no reprogramming. I don't believe all the tones were programmed. This is partial speculation based on my phone conversation with the EMA director regarding the matter.

As far as them pumping the Tempest siren through these things, that was done by ASC so I'm sure they know the risks. Hopefully that doesn't void the warranty though.

The other thing I noticed is the volume on them seems a bit sketchy. Some tests its BARELY audible from my backyard, other times it definitely grabs your attention. Sure it could be do to trees and atmospheric conditions, but I'm not buying that. I've lived near several sirens, even a modulator, and the volume never varied this much, even during severe weather. So I'm not sure what is going on with that, but it's very hit or miss. This went on with both the siren and the old voice recordings. Not sure if something is just up with the siren by my house, or if it's just due to different conditions. The sirens have SCADA that they run every day, so I would hope it would report a problem.

I really think this system will be fairly short-lived. Maybe 10 years. Especially if they start blowing drivers. The EMA director pushed for electronics, said the voice messages would be a good addition. Nope. The 4 languages thing went over really bad too. Beyond the philosophical reasons, which I will not get into because I don't want to start any problems here. It was just confusing. You can barely understand it as it is, then you are thrown another 3 languages. This just confused people, many of whom had never heard the system before due to testing time. I really do wonder what would have happened if Whelen or Federal won the bid instead. If we would have had the same problems with 2900's or Mods? He also said that one of the 2001's was starting to "fail" but did not go into any further detail. Whatever was wrong with it could have been repaired.Yes they were 19 years old( even though he says 25. But I was the one who watched them go up, not him.) but still, even if that one had to be replaced, still would have been a lot cheaper than the new 6 figure system.

I also think ASC should eat the cost on additional sirens. I'm not going to bash ASC, but come on. They were sold a bill of goods that did not live up to expectations, there is no way those sirens are 126db. But, that won't happen. So hopefully this will be a cautionary tale for other towns. If you are the only town in an area with this kind of system, it's probably for a very good reason.

Sorry about the rant. This whole thing still gets me fired up!

Would you happen to know what happened to the 2001s these replaced?
On the whole voice intelligibility, I remember seeing a post somewhere saying that the amps that ASC uses don't work as well for doing voice announcements vs siren tones, where ATI's amps are the opposite.