any good ones? preferable one that sounds more natural than fake and maybe controls to change the voice (rather than voice 1 2 3)

Try this. The English female is quite nice. http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html

not too bad, but was thinking more along the lines of having controls, like sliders, to create the voice

Most of the apps I've seen which offer configurable voices generally sound stilted and robotic. I've been monitoring AT&T's Natural Speech technology for a while, and it's pretty good, but I rather like Acapela's Heather and other voices now. Their technology seems to be developing quite nicely. http://demo.acapela-group.com/ Loquendo is doing some interesting things with regard to inflection and expression, also. http://actor.loquendo.com/actordemo/default.asp?voice=Simon

they sound nice, but guess i could always get sound editing software to change the voices after :)

Vocaloid Meiko (But only if you need singing...)

Bookmarked this conversation, very interesting.

use av diamond voice changer and you can record your own voice, changed to sound like anyone and anything.

spikboi: I've read several bad reviews for AV Voice Changer in the past, and I didn't find the demo particularly encouraging the last time I played around with it, which admittedly was a while back. How's it working for you? Does it let you mess around with formant now, or is it still just a pitch-shifter?

lets you mess around with everything. depending on your voice you really have to fiddle around to get exactly the right sound. static is a problem if you don't have a great microphone but yeah, for me it works great. I'll post up a sample video on my site tomorrow and give you the link.

What I'd really like to hear is the original voice, and then the changed voice for comparison.

no problem, post that up tomorrow

"a bit OT: text to speech converter? Aiko needs a voice!"

Not long ago I got PoserSpeak which I'm quite happy with for my time-constrained-hobbyist purposes. Anyway, I wanted some more realistic sounding voices so I ordered a couple from nextup.com. I sent them a polite email to ask where my order was because it was a few days (not many) late . A fellow named Ken White quickly responded:

"Erik, it looks like I screwed up and it didn't ship. I'm shipping it today and throwing in the AT&T Voices too to make up for the delay. You should have it by Tuesday at the latest."

I thought that was more than generous since it really hasn't been that long. I think the AT&T voices cost double what the ones I ordered did. I'll certainly buy from nextup.com again.

Message edited on: 02/24/2006 11:54

Thanks for the links, Little Dragon! Speakonia Kind of related - I've found this to be a good, free tool for creating synthesized voices using existing TTS engines. I've downloaded all the free versions of speech engines from MS, L&H & IBM, and it works with all of them. Very simple to use - just type in the text and click "Play". You select the voice from any speech engine installed on your system, and adjust sliders for pitch, speed and volume. Of course, they still all sound like robots. :-D I'd also be interested in hearing about any voice-morphing software that was worth the time to download. Most of the packages I checked out a few years back were horrendous resource-hogs that had the capabilities of toys. Plus, they were a bit spy-warish, as I recall. - Jimdoria ~@>@

Ah, if only voice acting was so simple! Really, for best results, you get an experienced actor and you put them in front of a decent microphone. My experience is also that someone with directing skills is an enormous help in getting the best performance out of even a skilled actor. I've gotten good voice performances from plenty of people "off the street," but it is worth underlining that most of the time, using a pitch changer on yourself or getting your sister to read a few lines is a way of shorting yourself. If you are going to spend the time getting good textures, good renders, good models, tweaking the animation, etc., then you deserve a good voice actor as well.

bkmrk

Found another TTS demo while browsing the 'Net. The available voices are somewhat rougher than the top contenders, but the engine allows a certain amount of configuration, and the company offers a custom voice design service.

http://www.cepstral.com/demos/