After a very short amount of time listening to a Text to Speech voice I now prefer it to almost any narrator. They are very good these days so I won’t be making use of this.
After a very short amount of time listening to a Text to Speech voice I now prefer it to almost any narrator. They are very good these days so I won’t be making use of this.
Who is your voice of choice? (I prefer Graham for nonfiction material. Paul or Brian for male-protagonist fiction and Lucy for female protagonist fiction.)
Just Neospeech Bridget all around. I like the fact that the voice is female and has a British accent and it seems to be of just all around higher quality than all the available voices except Ivona Amy.
Do you find that varying by subject the narrator helps with comprehension? Seems like it would take a bit of extra time.
Are you sure you’ve been comparing good narrators to that TTS voice?
A good narrator is, by definition, superior to a TTS (and as TTS improves, voiceover professionals will have to up their game).
But what is superior to a TTS, though, will vary according to the listener. What I want of a good narrator, for example (and I am moved to post this from having heard various storytellers of fiction), is someone who keeps him- or herself out of the matter, and is simply an intermediary, like a newsreader or simultaneous translator. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a voice, not a person. I don’t want a person chattering in my ear when what I want is the text. The voiceover artist’s job is, in fact, to be a better TTS.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a voice, not a person. I don’t want a person chattering in my ear when what I want is the text. The voiceover artist’s job is, in fact, to be a better TTS.
Hm, that’s interesting, because I generally look for just the opposite in podcasts, particularly fiction.
When I read text, the voice in my head emphasizes certain parts and changes tone in response to the content of the text, at a reasonably high level of abstraction (i.e. just looking at the syntax and formatting isn’t enough). If a narrator isn’t doing that, I have a hard time getting into the reading.
Yeah, seriously. And I have a large amount of experience with different narrators. I find that having one fixed voice aids my comprehension and I don’t care that much about how sonorous the voice is. If I could take my pick of a narrators, and some how get a text to speech version of their voice I would pick that and only listen to them to get the effect, but that isn’t in the cards.
Interesting. I love how everyone has such different preferences.
We’re definitely going to stick strictly to the human-narrated content, but there is certainly a growing market of services which can get you your TTS content and we think they have a place too.
After a very short amount of time listening to a Text to Speech voice I now prefer it to almost any narrator. They are very good these days so I won’t be making use of this.
Who is your voice of choice? (I prefer Graham for nonfiction material. Paul or Brian for male-protagonist fiction and Lucy for female protagonist fiction.)
Just Neospeech Bridget all around. I like the fact that the voice is female and has a British accent and it seems to be of just all around higher quality than all the available voices except Ivona Amy.
Do you find that varying by subject the narrator helps with comprehension? Seems like it would take a bit of extra time.
Seriously? Are you sure you’ve been comparing good narrators to that TTS voice?
For me, a good narrator will win out in an overwhelming majority of cases where I can choose between TTS and a good narrator.
A good narrator is, by definition, superior to a TTS (and as TTS improves, voiceover professionals will have to up their game).
But what is superior to a TTS, though, will vary according to the listener. What I want of a good narrator, for example (and I am moved to post this from having heard various storytellers of fiction), is someone who keeps him- or herself out of the matter, and is simply an intermediary, like a newsreader or simultaneous translator. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a voice, not a person. I don’t want a person chattering in my ear when what I want is the text. The voiceover artist’s job is, in fact, to be a better TTS.
Hm, that’s interesting, because I generally look for just the opposite in podcasts, particularly fiction.
When I read text, the voice in my head emphasizes certain parts and changes tone in response to the content of the text, at a reasonably high level of abstraction (i.e. just looking at the syntax and formatting isn’t enough). If a narrator isn’t doing that, I have a hard time getting into the reading.
Yeah, seriously. And I have a large amount of experience with different narrators. I find that having one fixed voice aids my comprehension and I don’t care that much about how sonorous the voice is. If I could take my pick of a narrators, and some how get a text to speech version of their voice I would pick that and only listen to them to get the effect, but that isn’t in the cards.
Interesting. I love how everyone has such different preferences.
We’re definitely going to stick strictly to the human-narrated content, but there is certainly a growing market of services which can get you your TTS content and we think they have a place too.
Which text to speech program do you use?
Textaloud. I describe my method a bit here.
2 − 5 books a day was an exaggeration, I think. It’s usually 2 − 3.