Sound -> Human Voice Synthesis

[coderedsim]

I'm sort of taking the one-man-band approach to developing a product.

 

As such, I have been searching around for a pipe-dream tool that will synthesize human speech so I don't have to hire voice actors / actresses - especially actresses as my female impersonation sounds a bit like a Monty Python character.

 

Believe it or not I have found a couple and have been playing with them. You record a voice (wav) and then fiddle with some controls to change the gender, pitch and so on. My results so far, however, are comparable to the Chipmonks Christmas Album (ohhh Dave!!!!).

 

Anyway, the two that I have been playing with (and I may just need to perfect my technique) are:

 

Blaze Audio Voice Cloak and Voice Changer 4.0 Diamond.

 

Any one with experience with these or recommendations for others?

 

Just in case, any sources for reasonably priced voice acting?

 

Ohhhh Dave!!!!! (Probably no one gets this and I am showing my age.)

[Karl]

The Boss VT1 is BY FAR the best low end product out there... It's used by DJs everywhere, especially to do the difficult male to female synthesis. My experience w/ Diamond is that it's buggy and "warbly" - definitely not suitable for most voice acting applications.

[Karl]

Just in case, any sources for reasonably priced voice acting?

Voice123.com allows you to put jobs up for bid - Post a Job: Let Talents Compete - which is one good way to get 100's of at home pros w/ studios to be price competitive. Good Luck!

[coderedsim]

Interesting software found for human voice synthesis...

 

I have found and downloaded the demo version of some technology developed by Yamaha (the piano company) that does a fair job of synthesizing human singing. A tremendous improvement over the typical tts (text-to-speech) tools.

 

The commercial version is a bit pricey ($200+ at zzounds) but if I can get this to work, and it shows promise, for "voicing" my characters it would be worth the price.

 

The software is really designed for singing but some references in the forums at ZeroGcs show some techniques for "straight-talk." This link will also get you to the free download to try it out if you want.

 

I will probably end up with a rather sing-song quality in my characters voices but that may be a cool and unique "feature" or perhaps terribly irritating. I will probably adopt this software at least for adding very unique music with vocals to my AM based creations.

 

Having ZERO music knowledge or ability, however, I think the learning curve may be steep for me.

 

Anyway, it seems that this may be a useful tool for other AM gamers / artists.

[Karl]

Regarding Yamaha's Vocaloid software - I bought LOLA and played around with it quite a bit, but found it to be exeedingly difficult to do non-musical applications. The less I made "her" sing the more mushy and synthesized her voice sounded. Also, Yamaha has some rights restrictions regarding morals and politics, which are unenforceable in the U.S., but widely held in most of the rest of the world. I contacted Yamaha's management/legal regarding this unenforceability and no one seemed to care or know much at all on the subject of "moral rights" for authors not being recognized in the U.S. This, BTW is one big reason why the press and software industries in most of the rest of the world suck compared to the US!!! ANYWAY, since my application is primarily adult only and political, this seemed like an unnecessary fight to pick w/ a major corporation... Yamaha's U.S. unenforceable moral rights claims probably won't affect you, but in the off chance they do - be advised. Basically "moral rights" gives the original author to "veto" quoting him/her/it anywhere or employing their software in anyway the original author(s) don't want - this pretty much harms many forms of secondary trading in intellectual property - like the software industry, for example. Personally the results obtainable from LOLA for speech only would be barely acceptable - better than Diamond anyway - but only at 10 or 20 times (at least) the effort required for a straight recording. The direction I'm heading is to use the Boss VT1 by myself to convey what I want for voice actors/actresses and then use Voice123.com or a local recording studio and local talent to get what I want for final production. Yamaha's Vocaloid software would burn A LOT of time, still advise the BOSS VT1 if you don't want to pay at least $100's or $1000's for true voice talent...Also, to avoid the dreaded "amateur sound" you'll need a good microphone and pro quality sound card too, which is at least another $250-300.

[coderedsim]

Thanks Karl.

 

You have probably saved me days of effort and possibly some money too!

 

My hesitation with the Boss VT1 is that it is hardware and I really like the try before you buy model because so much of what is out there is really crap.

 

Curious thing: I searched for BossVT1 on ebay and what came up was a modified BossVt1 setup for spying - so said the ebay listing. The listing claimed the original never includes standard audio in / out for mic / recording.

 

Plus, the bid was somewhere between $400 and $500 bucks!

[Karl]

Might want to check zzounds.com's return policy together with your credit card company to see if those together would meet your returnability criteria.

 

It has a mic in/out and line in/out, so... the only reason I could see to modify it for "spying" would be to add a telephone handset interface to it.