A Paging event, whether it be Emergency or regular can be assigned a Preamble (chime) to be played at the beginning of an announcement. Preambles are available for both Live and Pre-Recorded Paging modes and can be assigned to a paging events from capable devices; DS-4/10, WS-4/10, EWS-4/10, VI-6, MS-1, VoIP-1 and POTS-1. A total of 20 seconds of Preamble audio is available (per device) with a maximum length of 10 seconds of audio in a single file.
Each paging device can be configured to use the Preambles as defined in the Universe Preamble set, the World Preamble set or a device specific Preamble set. If a device is configured to use the Universe Preamble set, all World Preamble and Device Preamble settings will be ignored. If one of the other options is chosen then the alternate two options will be disregarded. Preamble assignment can consist of a single Preamble audio file assigned to one or more Priorities. When a Paging event occurs at a Priority that matches or is within range of the values specified, the associated Preamble will precede the Paging event.
The Audio File Manager must have Preambles loaded into it before they can be assigned to a Preamble set and the correct Priority Level must be assigned to the Page Code.
The location to define which Preamble assignment a device will use is located under the devices properties > Preamble section. However if a TTS-1 or TTS-1nc Page event is configured to play a Preamble then the Preambles as specified in the MS-1 Preambles dialog tasked with playing the message will be used.
The regular Paging Priority Range applies to the DS-4/10, WS-4/10, VI-6 and MS-1. The Emergency Paging Priority Range applies to the EWS-4/10. Across the entire priority range (1 - 255) applies to the VoIP-1 and POTS-1. Refer to the Universe General Settings for configuring the Emergency Priority Threshold split and to assist in determining the assignable priority ranges.
If a paging device has been configured to use the World Preamble set, however the World preambles setting is configured to use Universe preambles the paging event will be escalated to use the Universe Preamble configurations instead.
The message storage on the devices is dynamic, so if the same preamble is used at different priorities then there is no penalty – if a 3 second preamble is used for priority 1 and the same preamble is used for priority 10 then the total resource is 3 seconds.