[games_access] RetroRemakes Programmers Q&A 2006: Audio Question

[Sander H.]

Hi Barrie,

I don't think you can say that female voices are more clear than male 
voices. It depends so much on the voice itself, but also the background 
sounds/other sound layers (and the atmosphere in the user environment) 
have a great impact on the clarity of the voice. I think you can listen 
for yourself, to find out which voice is more clear. But one of the most 
powerful tricks is not turning the volume of music up too loud. :)
And I think with voices one would sooner listen to an attractive voice. 
This also counts for speech synthesis!

In Holland the general speech synthesis model (Elisabeth) does not sound 
attractive. She sounds like a gruffy old lady, while the most common 
Belgian speech synthesis offers a very cute young lady. Most people in 
Holland choose the Belgian speech synthesis, even though it's another 
accent!

Sander

Giannis Georgalis schreef:
> Hello,
>
>> http://www.retroremakes.com/forum2/showthread.php?t=6572
>
>> I'm hoping to provide voice cues, especially for menu options, but 
>> maybe at other points if it's appropriate to the game. Is it 
>> preferable to have either a male or female voice, or doesn't it 
>> matter? My guess would be that a higher voice would have more 
>> clarity, but if there's a general concensus or some actual research, 
>> it would be good to know.
>>
>>
>> Richard, Giannis, Sander, anyone?
>
> I'm not aware of any research on the effect of the tone of the human 
> voice on clarity, but I saw that the festival TTS engine was mentioned 
> and I wanted to bring flite (festival-lite) to your attention:
>
> http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/flite/
>
> which is much lighter than flite, although it has fewer capabilities 
> and voices.
>
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