Lobby and elevator announcements with AI voice: 12 messages for $0.09

Cost for a full set

A set of 12 building announcements, each about 150 characters, is 1,800 characters. At Sume's $0.0475 per 1,000 characters that is 1.8 x $0.0475 = $0.0855, so about nine cents for the set. You pay once per generation and play the files as often as you like.

Announcements are short, fixed and repeated, which is the best case for text to speech: generate once, review once, store the files.

Plan the messages

List every message with an id before you generate. A lobby usually needs a handful of types, and each type is one job.

Generate and store

Submit one POST /v1/tts-1.0/generate per message with a stable Idempotency-Key such as lobby-fire-drill-v1. Poll the job and keep the result URL. If a message text changes, bump the key to v2; the old file stays valid.

For a second language, send the translated text with that language's ISO code in language and a voice that speaks it. Sume's check on language mismatch returns a warning you can confirm, which is a reason to review the first file in each new language before you ship.

Format for your player

The default output is mp3 at 44,100 Hz and 128 kbps, which most signage and speaker systems accept. If your paging system wants a different container or sample rate, the output_format object takes mp3, wav or raw, with sample rates from 8,000 to 48,000 Hz. Test one file on the real hardware before you generate all 12.

• Use generation_config.speed slightly below 1 for large, echoing rooms.
• Keep each message to one idea so staff can swap a single file.
• Version the key and file name together.

Review before you install

Read each script aloud once while you listen to the file. Announcements go wrong in small ways: a room number read as a quantity, an abbreviation spoken letter by letter, a time written as 3:05 that is voiced oddly. Fix these in the text, not in the audio. Write numbers the way you want them spoken, and use a pronunciation dictionary through pronunciation_dict_id for names that recur, such as a tenant or a street.

Keep a table of message id, text, version and job id. When a building rule changes, you will know which files to replace, and you will not have to listen to all twelve again.

Limits worth knowing

A single job can hold up to 20,000 characters and 1,200 seconds of audio, so announcements are nowhere near the ceiling. Do not resubmit a paid request that looks slow; poll the status URL instead, as the jobs guide says.