Associated Incidents
I noticed that the Amazon commercials usually do not trigger the device, or if they do, she only momentarily wakes before ignoring what is said. I did a little research tonight and found that the Echo, while it’s processing the wake word, searches the Audio Spectrum and if is significantly quieter in the area of 4000hz to 5000hz, she will not wake for the word. I achieved this by going on YouTube, and playing with a voice recording of the name in Audacity.
I found that when I analyzed the spectrum of them saying her name, the spectrums were significantly quieter in the range of 3000hz to 6000hz. In some of those recordings, those frequencies appeared to be non-existent. In others it appeared like the boosted the surrounding frequencies to make the Echo see a gap in the spectrum.
I then got an Audacity plug-in to allow me to do a band-stop filter. I found that when I took a recording of someone saying the wake word, and ran the plug-in centered on 5200hz at “Half an Octave.” (Beware, Dual monitor picture) My echo would not wake, even sitting right next to the speakers!
Maybe this information can be used by news networks to help them prevent accidental activations.
Can anyone else experiment with this and tell me if it works for you too?