Is there a computer program that create realistic human sounding voices yet?

MaJeStIc_WaRrIoR · 03-30-2015, 07:18 PM

Considering the fact that they have cars that drive by themselves, voice activated programs, touch screen programs, Coachella etc....I was wondering if they have created a program that creates realistic human sounding voices yet?

jefro · 03-30-2015, 07:36 PM

Musical companies have been working on simulated instruments for years. The most accurate way is to sample real instruments and then use logic to present them back.

The problem with making realistic speech is only a matter of using every word in every possible sentence and for every possible expression.

So, making a human sounding word is easy, making a sentence is a different thing.

The amount of data it would take would be huge.

dugan · 03-30-2015, 08:07 PM

Depends on your standard for "realistic". I've heard Vocaloid songs that sound absolutely amazing to my ears (take that with the caveat that they're in Japanese and I don't know Japanese).

veerain · 03-31-2015, 01:00 AM

Festival and Flite produces english voices from text. It is better than espeak.

Espeak produces voices in many languages.

MaJeStIc_WaRrIoR · 03-31-2015, 07:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by veerain

Festival and Flite produces english voices from text. It is better than espeak.

Espeak produces voices in many languages.

But, are they actual purely computer generated voices that clone human speech, or are they real people's voices with computer voices overlapping them?

MaJeStIc_WaRrIoR · 03-31-2015, 07:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Depends on your standard for "realistic". I've heard Vocaloid songs that sound absolutely amazing to my ears (take that with the caveat that they're in Japanese and I don't know Japanese).

Realistic to me means, that the recordings on the computer are not human's speech, but an actual computer that was programed to sound like a real man and a real woman.

veerain · 03-31-2015, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaJeStIc_WaRrIoR

But, are they actual purely computer generated voices that clone human speech, or are they real people's voices with computer voices overlapping them?

Some are pure computer generated but they don't sound like human voice. So human voice is used to assist some.

So they are not pure computer generated voice and they don't sound perfectly like human ones.

Gerard.M.Frey · 03-31-2015, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaJeStIc_WaRrIoR

Considering the fact that they have cars that drive by themselves, voice activated programs, touch screen programs, Coachella etc....I was wondering if they have created a program that creates realistic human sounding voices yet?

There are scripts or codes that uses google's translate as a API to do text to speech from the command line. And is by far the most realistic human voice I've heard.

Here are a few from commandlinefu.com
http://www.commandlinefu.com/command.../sort-by-votes

Here is a script from pastebin that uses google's translate from the command line.

http://pastebin.com/PBAzq6A9

The code in the script uses mpg321 as the player. Either install this program if you haven't or change the code to use another player like mplayer.

Just paste the code to a text file and give it a filename, for example "say" and then give it execute permissions.

To use it, type

/path to your script/say "Hello world"

brianL · 04-03-2015, 05:43 AM

Sort of on topic.
I've used espeak for my answerphone message. It sounds like an aged, knackered Dalek.

Quote:

Brian has been kidnapped by aliens. Please leave a message, in case they bring him back.

Command used to create it:

Code:

espeak -v croak -s 80 -f greet.txt -w greet.wav

MaJeStIc_WaRrIoR · 04-10-2015, 08:16 PM

Thanks everyone, I appreciated your comments!