This is something that I feel everyone has their own opinions on to some extent. When it comes to voice evac, there are a number of different tones and messages that are played to warn occupants in a building of an emergency that requires evacuation or other emergency action. What tones/messages do you think gets the message out the best? Do you think that there should be a certain way the messages are announced? Let me know!
Not really sure about the message but I would like the tone to be like the one that is for the seatbelt reminder in the car. 
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Honestly I prefer code-3 tone with a pitch of about 900-1000hz and the normal “there has been a report of fire in the building” type message. Just anything that doesnt make the alarms sound like some sort of toy like the tones on the multitone truealertES.
One of my favorite voice evacuation messages is this one:
I believe it’s a custom message, judging by the click when the message ends. I wish all evac messages sounded like this. It’s very concise and the speech is clear.
I don’t remember who it was but someone on this board recorded their own voice evacuation message and it sounded really good. Maybe they can work for Simplex and replace their aging default (male) voice evacuation message.
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I can’t remember what it was called, but there was a system test video (taken in a hospital, I think) that had a really nice hi-lo chime tone that essentially went hi-lo-hi pause hi-lo-hi. Don’t think there was a voice message, but I may be wrong. I’m not sure what the panel was, but the notification devices were Wheelock E-70s.
[quote=EpicFireAlarms post_id=83026 time=1549115399 user_id=3400]
I can’t remember what it was called, but there was a system test video (taken in a hospital, I think) that had a really nice hi-lo chime tone that essentially went hi-lo-hi pause hi-lo-hi. Don’t think there was a voice message, but I may be wrong. I’m not sure what the panel was, but the notification devices were Wheelock E-70s.
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You mean this?
[quote=randomperson post_id=83027 time=1549120528 user_id=3878]
You mean this?
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Actually yeah… I’m not sure that’s the exact video that I saw, but that’s the tone.
That tone kind of reminds me of the chime in my mother’s old Hyundai. xD
This one would be my favorite:
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Sounds like the beginning to a Calvin Harris song. 
I would have to choose the Siemens one where it changes gender halfway through the message. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.
But seriously, I would have to say that 4100U/ES slow whoop takes the cake for me. Due to the fact that the tone itself is a recording, it sounds much more “analog” than any of the other whoop tones. As for the message itself, I’d have to say either the “There has been a fire emergency reported in the building…” message, or no message at all.
Now that you bring that up, I wouldn’t mind using that voice evac message with the changing gender. XD
As far as slow whoops go, I like the classic 4100 whoop tone best. Sounds realistic and attention-grabbing, but not as startling as I think the U/ES one is.
That said, at the risk of being boring, I think 520Hz code 3 should be the standard.
maybe a code 3 whoop
That seems to be the default tone for most voice-evac systems.
I prefer the “Loud Whoop” one for the voice evacuation message.
I would think that might be just as startling and unnerving as horns in my opinion.
The “Fast Whoop” one.
For tones, the Code-3 whoop is probably one of the best attention tones. Code-3 is the ANSI standard for fire, plus the whoop tone adds a bit more to the otherwise monotonous tone used on other alarms. Heck, even Autocall wrote that a whoop tone is the best possible alert tone!
Anyway, NFPA72 section 24.4.2.1 specifies playing the “attention tone” twice before the message.
Then, my philosophy is that you want to instruct occupants what to do, but not necessarily give them super detailed information. For instance,
“There is a fire on the third floor of the building, please leave the building by the nearest stairway exit” is a bad idea, because what are people going to do? Go to the third floor to see if there really is a fire.
My idea of a good voice message would be:
“Attention please, attention please. An emergency has been reported in the building. In the interest of safety, you are to leave the building by the nearest exit or exit stairway. Do not use elevators.”
Motivated by the comment above, I looked up 24.4.2.1 in NFPA 72 and found that it also says that the tone shall be the emergency evacuation signal specified in 18.4.2, that is, the Temporal 3 pattern. This is present at least as far back as the 2010 edition. So, it would seem to me that voice evac systems are in fact required to use a Temporal 3 tone. What I don’t understand then, is how come there are so many voice evac systems installed within the last decade that use non-Temporal 3 tones, such as Slow Whoop. Am I interpreting the code wrong, or are all those systems violating the code?