| Author | Post |
|---|
slychiu
Administrator
| Joined: | Saturday Apr 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 1029 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Saturday Jan 6th, 2007 09:41 am |
|
We are planning to record a new voice for the UK, as some have complained that our standard voice is not "english" enough
We have 2 potential candidates here so that everyone can have the opportunity to review
Charlie and Kate are the voices
Attachment: Charlie.mp3 (Downloaded 37 times)
|
slychiu
Administrator
| Joined: | Saturday Apr 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 1029 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Saturday Jan 6th, 2007 09:42 am |
|
This is Kate
Attachment: Kate_02.mp3 (Downloaded 34 times)
|
garym999
Comfort Installers
| Joined: | Saturday Aug 19th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 196 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tuesday Jan 9th, 2007 01:50 pm |
|
In this form they both sound fine with my preference being Charile. The issue with these examples is that they do not replicate what the comfort voice programming and the keypad will do to the quality of playback.
I think part of peoples problem with the voice is clarity. The inconsistences in speed of speech and the gaps as the words are strung together or the wrong inflections etc.
In that utopia, I think a "text to speech" engine would be great. Would be very easy to upload new voice styles etc. Additionally responses could then contain endless custom phases doing away for custom voices.
It might even be that a TTS engine could be used to create a new recording rather than booking studio time?
Examples:
http://actor.loquendo.com/actordemo/default.asp?page=id (As used in TomTom sat nav)
http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
http://www.neospeech.com/demo/demo_text.php
http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/demo/
|
slychiu
Administrator
| Joined: | Saturday Apr 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 1029 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wednesday Jan 10th, 2007 12:03 pm |
|
Thats something to look into. Perhaps some of the voices can be licenced.
You seem to be a fount of information!
|
palmlodge
Member
| Joined: | Thursday Dec 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 250 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Thursday Jan 25th, 2007 08:03 am |
|
Does that mean we get Jon Cleese as a voice option like in TomTom :-)
|
garym999
Comfort Installers
| Joined: | Saturday Aug 19th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 196 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Thursday Jan 25th, 2007 08:39 am |
|
If Cytech and their customers really wanted John Cleese then it would be a case of paying the royalities and studio time. Considering the debate over the current voice I'd guess that is going to be unlikley.
Would be a lovely thought that we could have that much flexibility but my suggestions above are really food for though for future versions of Comfort. The engine (electronics) is not there yet. No TTS engine or MP3 playback.
On the older TomToms real voices and phrases were encoded but (and this is where I think the main difference is) they managed to keep the continuity and inflections in place. The comfort processing seems to loose some of this. The latest TTs now use TTS technology.
My personal preference would be a TTS engine as this means that almost any word can be said rather than locking you in to specific ones. Of course there are good and bad versions of these and then being realistic the cost. Imagine the power of a Response "Say Text <location> <text string>". Where location is keypad, doorphone, ALARM SPEAKER and text string is a line of text.
Anyway back to todays voice, whatever her name is.
|
garym999
Comfort Installers
| Joined: | Saturday Aug 19th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 196 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wednesday May 16th, 2007 08:24 pm |
|
What about these....
Link1
Link2
Links take a while to download and not sure how long they will last.
As it is flash driven I wonder if it could be embedded into a touchscreen with comfort sending the text to speech?
Want to play?
|
adlim
Member
| Joined: | Wednesday May 3rd, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 210 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wednesday Aug 15th, 2007 03:34 am |
|
I am pleased to announce the creation of a new UK voice.
It is available from:
http://www.cytech-technology.com/software_right.php?71
Note that the file is meant for use with Comfort II only.
Further editing may be necessary for the words, this is just to get an initial feedback
Regards
Last edited on Wednesday Aug 15th, 2007 05:23 am by
|
palmlodge
Member
| Joined: | Thursday Dec 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 250 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wednesday Aug 15th, 2007 09:49 am |
|
Both Anita and Kate are in BIN format
VoiceProc and VoicePlay (Id like to hear them first) both require INI files. How can we get to hear the voice in action before any upload to Comfort ?
|
palmlodge
Member
| Joined: | Thursday Dec 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 250 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wednesday Aug 15th, 2007 05:21 pm |
|
I've put Kate on to the system - works ok - although had to use Comfigurator 212 to get it working - 221 failed multiple times.
What I find tho is the voice is too slow. But, if you speed things up in comfigurator, she says the words faster, but thats not the issue - it's the pause length between each word that need shortening, but I dont see an option there.
So, with things speeded up, she now says each word in a short sharp manner, but the gap between the words doesnt appear to change.
Is there a way to shorten the gap between the words in a phrase, and not the speed of the word itself ?
|
slychiu
Administrator
| Joined: | Saturday Apr 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 1029 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Thursday Aug 16th, 2007 03:30 am |
|
This can be changed by editing of each word to reduce the silence before and/or after each word. This is not the final version of the voice, it is for feedback and comments - we will do a further edit on it after that
|
garym999
Comfort Installers
| Joined: | Saturday Aug 19th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 196 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tuesday Aug 21st, 2007 01:03 pm |
|
Oooh, I like her. More forceful and Much clearer voice.
As Palm lodge says, some timmings could be improved and also a coulple of the words need better volume matching.
Good work 
|
palmlodge
Member
| Joined: | Thursday Dec 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 250 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wednesday Aug 22nd, 2007 07:37 am |
|
More forceful ? You want the Comfort Dominatrix version ? :-)
garym999 wrote:
Oooh, I like her. More forceful and Much clearer voice.
As Palm lodge says, some timmings could be improved and also a coulple of the words need better volume matching.
Good work
|
Kanna
Comfort Distributors
|
Posted: Thursday Aug 23rd, 2007 09:09 am |
|
Kate has a great voice for the New Zealand / Australia market.
When is the upgrade available?
Thanks
Kanna
|
slychiu
Administrator
| Joined: | Saturday Apr 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 1029 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Thursday Aug 23rd, 2007 10:11 am |
|
Kate's voice has been re-edited to improve the gaps between the words so that it sounds better, download from http://www.cytech-technology.com/temp/software/kate26.bin
This will replace Anita as the default voice, but it may take some time to go through the production supply chain.
|
garym999
Comfort Installers
| Joined: | Saturday Aug 19th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 196 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Friday Aug 24th, 2007 10:53 am |
|
I have now uploaded Kate from a test system to a live system. Lets see how she likes living in there 
Of note was the fact I lost the greeting message etc. so for anyone testing just remember this.
|
slychiu
Administrator
| Joined: | Saturday Apr 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 1029 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Friday Aug 24th, 2007 01:45 pm |
|
We should warn everyone that putting in a new voice will erase all the messages including Greeting, new, saved, Reminder Messages, Alarm Voice Messages so be prepared to rerecord greeting, reminder and Alarm Voice mesages (for announcement in all outgoing dial to voice phones)
|
ident
Administrator
| Joined: | Wednesday Aug 9th, 2006 |
| Location: | Singapore |
| Posts: | 286 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Thursday Sep 13th, 2007 05:37 am |
|
The full wav and dat files for the new Kate voice is now available for download at http://www.cytech-technology.com/temp/software/kate.zip
Unzip using Folder path and run VoicePlay with kate26.ini. You will be able to hear the uncompressed and compressed sentences
A US version is also available (Angela) at http://www.cytech-technology.com/temp/software/Angela.zip
|
palmlodge
Member
| Joined: | Thursday Dec 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 250 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Thursday Sep 13th, 2007 03:21 pm |
|
| I cant extract these files - lots of errors unzipping...
|
garym999
Comfort Installers
| Joined: | Saturday Aug 19th, 2006 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 196 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Thursday Sep 13th, 2007 08:43 pm |
|
I have also had problems, files appear to download fine, you can even see contents under explorer but cannot extract them 
|
Current time is 04:24 pm | Page: 1 2   |
|