Voices...

[Larry]

I have 2 adult female and 8 adult male voices which all sound like crap plus microsoft mary, mike, and sam which all sound better... what could possibly be the problem? I'd much rather hear some sexy female voices that sound better than the choices I currently have... any suggestions???

[WholyChao]

It depends how much money you're willing to spend.  One of the best voices you're going to find for free is the L&H TTS 3000 "British Female"  There are several companies you can find with better voices -the best I've heard is from a company called "nuance".  More realistic, which I what I think you're getting at when you say 'sexy', voices can cost from $20 up through hundres of dollars.  

You also need to consider that it's not just the tamber (vocal quality) of the voice that effects how sexy it sounds, it's also timing, inflection and emphisis.  Most of that is far to complex to have a computer program change the inflection for each word and the context of the word within a sentence, or within a conversation.

If you want to hear a really, really sexy voice - you're still going to have to be nice to a real girl. If you want to hear a better voice than your current options you're going to have to shell out some cash.

You can always use the links from the Zabaware "Plug-In" menu, or from the MSAgent ring, BotSpot or just do a google search for "TTS" or "Text To Speach"

Good Luck

WholyChao

[Larry]

Lol, I think maybe I put too much emphasis on the sexy voice. I probably should have put more detail in what is happening. When Hal first starts up his voice is sharp and clear. That’s with the banner, then when Peedy comes up, his voice speeds up and becomes broken and scratchy. When I check the “voices” again, all of them sound the same (crappy) except the Microsoft Mary, Mike, and Sam which sound a little better – but not as good as when Hal first started up… See where I’m going now?

I have duel 500mhz, sound blaster, running w2000 server edition. Thanks for attempting to solve my problem…
Larry

[WholyChao]

I'm not completely sure how I can help.  I'm not sure how much you understand so let me start of with what the voices are.  The voice is an application of TTS (Text to Speech) Program.  The program has a series of phonic rules which is applies to character-strings.  I'm not really sure - but a broken or speed up voice could come from a processing problem.  I don't have a lot of knowledge about that.

Is any voice particularly bad? Are you running Hal alone - or is it running with other processor hungry programs?  I'm just shooing in the dark here.

WholyChao

[Larry]

I have a processor "monitor" on the bottom corner of the screen. For the most part it's only 2-5% processor usage. It will shoot up to about 81% when I hit enter (saying something to hal).

There are about 10 TruVoice Voices and 3 Microsoft voices. The 3 Microsoft voices sound much better than the 10 TruVoice(s). What I don't understand, When Hal first starts up, with that banner, the voice is completely clear and understandable. Then when it switches over to the Chat box with Peedy in the picture, the voice changes to crap...

I think I said all that before - the only other thing I have running is AtomTime which only activates once every 6 hours. EudoraPro which checks mail every 1/2 hour. That's about it. Oh this is W2000 server edition running on dual 500mhz processors...

Thanks for taking the time to try to help me out here...

[Medeksza]

If you want really realistic sounding voices checkout AT&T's Natural Voices demo at http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/

This TTS engine does work with Hal, but it does not contain syncronization information. So it will not work with MSAgent characters, only with Zabaware characters. The AT&T natural voices engine is a huge resource hog. A single voice font takes around 600 MB of space on your computer, and it requires a ton of CPU and memory power, so a top of the line computer is needed to work well with Hal.