Computer Voices

Denise Sawicki | December 22, 2002
Click here to get a computerized voice to say a phrase of your choice of up to 30 words. I read about this in the latest Discover magazine, where it said that these voices were extremely lifelike. Um, no they aren't. PowerMacs came standard with voices that sounded better than most of these in 1996 or earlier. However, these use actual recorded "half-phonemes" from real people's voices instead of being entirely computer-generated like earlier computerized voices. "Mike" sounds particularly bad, but "Crystal" actually sonuds OK.Anyhow, take a look if you're bored. It can be kind of fun, especially if you give the French, German, and Spanish voices English phrases to say.

Scott Hardie | December 22, 2002
"Charles" is especially fun, I think.

I keep waiting for great advances in speech simulation, but they just don't come. It's been, what, seven years since we've had feature films that have been completely animated by computers? How long until we have the sound for those films completely computer-generated as well?

Matthew Preston | December 22, 2002
Having Mike say, "I bought the floor model biyatch" sounds pretty good.

Lori Lancaster | December 22, 2002
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Jackie Mason | December 22, 2002
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Scott Hardie | January 31, 2003
You may have seen this before, but anyway: Dictionaraoke, in which the voice-synthesized American Heritage Dictionary sings the greats. My personal favorite is Slayer's "South of Heaven."