Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: shateredsoul on July 18, 2010, 08:25:18 pm

Title: creepy thing of the day
Post by: shateredsoul on July 18, 2010, 08:25:18 pm
http://192.20.225.36/tts/speech/b9d0aaac664d373502f71bdd5ae2334a.wav (http://192.20.225.36/tts/speech/b9d0aaac664d373502f71bdd5ae2334a.wav)


http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php (http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php)
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: Ginsu Victim on July 18, 2010, 10:41:33 pm
Your wav file link doesn't work.
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: drventure on July 18, 2010, 10:53:47 pm
Kind of interesting, but it doesn't seem to sound all that much better than Microsoft Sam, with the pitch tweaked a bit.
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: patrickl on July 19, 2010, 07:43:30 am
These voices have existed probably for almost a decade.

The first TomTom Navigator versions used computer created voices already (which sounded better than this though)
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: shateredsoul on July 19, 2010, 10:30:26 am
true true, my old mac performa (ha ha hah) had this. It's a shame that new pcs don't have this feature built in. 

I bugged my wife with it for a while by only talking to her through the text to speech. Maybe i'm the reason it was creepy, probably.
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: patrickl on July 19, 2010, 11:02:05 am
true true, my old mac performa (ha ha hah) had this. It's a shame that new pcs don't have this feature built in. 
I'm pretty sure every Windows PC since Windows 95 came standard with text to speech. Go to settings and then Speech (or something similar). You can pick the default voice.

It usually comes with standard crappy voices (and a poor engine) though. That Sam voice is appalling (Stephen Hawking bad). You can buy and install much better voices. Like the ones from AT&T, but also many others. I like the RealSpeak ones, but mostly because they supply Dutch voices too  :P

NextUp has a website with lots of them (http://www.nextup.com/)
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: newmanfamilyvlogs on July 19, 2010, 11:20:06 am
I've always found the Vocaloid system by Yamaha rather intriguing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocaloid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocaloid)

Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: patrickl on July 19, 2010, 12:09:55 pm
Indeed Dr Sbaitso! Compared to the current engines that sounds pretty bad though. Much like the standard SAM voice.

That Vocaloid singing voice, yeah that's pretty imprsesive.

I just remembered Loquendo also had a an emotional TTS engine. You can find some demos on their website (http://www.loquendo.com/en/demos/demo_tts.htm). never quite figured out where to buy their software or voices though. They seem to work with big corporations only or something. I think their voices cost hundreds of euro's.
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: RayB on July 19, 2010, 01:42:41 pm
I first used that AT&T one back in the late 90's. I was impressed with it then. I wonder why 13 years later it has not improved.
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: ChadTower on July 19, 2010, 02:03:38 pm

I learned to code on a Ti99 in the third grade basically so I could use the speech synthesizer and tell my friends to do obscene things in that voice.   It was really impressive back in the day to be able to tell someone "Michael Jackson called - he wants his jacket back".

Hey, it was third grade.   ;D
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: AtomSmasher on July 19, 2010, 02:26:32 pm
http://www.xkcd.com/768/ (http://www.xkcd.com/768/)
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: RayB on July 19, 2010, 02:49:40 pm
I was impressed with it then. I wonder why 13 years later it has not improved.

Yeah, and we could say the same thing about fax machines, video chat, and all that other crap we were promised 50 years ago....   ;D
Hold on now, webcams can now shoot high def 30fps (or higher?), we have the bandwidth to carry it, fax machines aren't limited to 300 baud anymore... etc. Not sure what your point is.
Title: Re: creepy thing of the day
Post by: patrickl on July 19, 2010, 03:40:23 pm
There is no comparison to the speech syntesizers of the late eighties early nineties and the software that we have now. It's lightyears better now.