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Help centre · For airline staff

Cabin sound packs

An airline can give its pilots a cabin sound pack: recorded announcements (welcome on board, the safety briefing, top of descent, arrival...) that Vaeroly ACARS plays by itself at the matching moment of each flight. Staff with Documents and downloads add it; every active pilot of the airline gets it automatically.

Switching it on

Turn on Cabin sound packs in Staff → Airline settings → Optional features. The pack's page is Staff → Community → Sound pack.

Vaeroly doesn't store files. You put the pack's ZIP file on a host of your choice and give Vaeroly its link. Vaeroly downloads it once to check it and remembers its size and checksum; ACARS then downloads the file from that link, and refuses it if it isn't exactly the file that was checked.

The host must give the file itself (a direct download), not a page about it: for example a link that ends in the file's name, or a host's "direct download" option. Google Drive and Dropbox share links are turned into their direct download for you.

Using Google Drive

  1. Upload the ZIP file to Google Drive.
  2. Share it as Anyone with the link.
  3. Paste the link on the Sound pack page (or in Documents, ticking This link is a cabin sound pack).

Keep the pack under 25 MB: for bigger files Google shows a warning page instead of the file, and the check fails. Share the file itself, not a folder.

Making a pack

A pack is one ZIP file with manifest.json and the WAV recordings, all at the top of the ZIP (no folders, nothing else inside). The Example manifest button on the Sound pack page downloads a manifest to start from.

  • Recordings: WAV, 16-bit PCM, mono or stereo, 16000, 22050, 44100 or 48000 Hz, up to 5 minutes and 5 MB each. 16000 or 22050 Hz mono sounds like a real cabin and keeps the pack small. A pack can be at most 25 MB.
  • File names: lower-case letters a-z, digits, - and _, up to 60 characters, ending in .wav, and written in the manifest exactly as in the ZIP.
  • The manifest: "format": 1, a name, the languages (up to 4 codes such as en), optional credits shown to pilots, and a list of cues. Each cue names the moment (cue), its files per language, and optionally a caption (text), the aircraft types it is for (types, such as A20N, or A32* for a family), a delay of up to 600 seconds and "pick": "random" to choose one of several files.
  • Moments, in flight order: boarding, doors_closed, pushback, safety, takeoff_seats, after_takeoff, cruise, top_of_descent, descent_10k, approach, go_around, arrival, gate.

Only use recordings your airline owns or is licensed to share: you confirm this with a tick box on every version, and Vaeroly can take a pack down after a report.

Adding and publishing a version

Paste the link and press Check and add. Vaeroly checks every file and shows a report: the moments found and missing, the total length, the size, the languages and aircraft types, the link and its checksum.

A new version isn't given to pilots until you press Publish this version, and only a version whose check passed can be published. Publishing an earlier version rolls back to it. Check link again downloads the file again: if it changed, the check fails and pilots stop getting that version until you add the new file as a new version. Pause the pack stops pilots and ACARS getting it without deleting anything. The last 3 versions are kept. The published version can't be deleted while the pack is live: publish another version or pause the pack first.

For pilots

When your airline has published a pack, ACARS downloads it from its link in the background and plays each announcement at its moment of the flight. You can see the announcements and their captions under Airline → Cabin sound pack on the crew centre.

ACARS keeps one folder per airline in its settings folder, under VaerolyACARS/sound-packs/<airline>/ (on Linux vaeroly-acars/sound-packs/<airline>/). To turn the announcements off or change the volume, open Settings in ACARS; there is also a quick mute on the Flight tab. Removing ACARS from your computer removes the packs too.

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