Does anyone happen to know who the voices on voice-evacuation systems are?
I’m wondering if they are professional voice actors or just the manufacturer’s employees.
The one I’m trying to get a positive ID on is the one who does (or did) the Simplex messages.
At first, he sounded a bit like John Doyle, a professional voiceover artist who did voices for the Stream John Doyle 'Audichron' - Machine Intercept Recording 675 (vintage telephone sound) by ElmerCat | Listen online for free on SoundCloud Audichron company for telephone company recordings, and also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJewUiP0Ueo shortwave radio stations like WWV.
So, with that hunch in mind, I got into contact with Evan Doorbell, one of the phone phreaks who made extensive tape recordings of the old network. I sent him a clip of the default Simplex message, and he said that he doesn’t believe that that was John Doyle. So, back to square one I suppose. My next step I think would be to contact someone at Simplex directly, and ask if they had any record of who the voice was, if at all.
As far as I can tell, the voice who does the 4100ES’s “There is a fire emergency in the building. You are to leave the building by the nearest exit. Do not use elevators.” is a different person.
As far as the Fire-Lite, Notifier, Silent Knight, and Wheelock voices, I have a hunch I’ll have to do a lot of digging as well.
My workplace features a Simplex 4100ES voice evac system that broadcasts bilingual messages. The English and French portions of the messages sound like they were recorded by the same person (a younger male with a rather neutral accent in both languages). This person’s voice sounds very much like the voice used for the bilingual announcements in my city’s public transit system, which were Meet the voice you hear every time you ride Ottawa public transit | Ottawa Citizen recorded by a local actor. Due to these similarities, I suspect that the voice evac messages at my workplace were recorded by the same actor as the public transit system’s announcements.
For comparison, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN8Vv0KcGWM&feature=emb_logo here is a recording I made of the voice evac messages at my workplace and https://youtu.be/ekXBy3DPpao?t=128 here is a video in which the public transit system’s announcements can be heard (not my video).
The voice evac messages used at my workplace are quite unique. I wonder if they were perhaps recorded specifically for this building.