Mike Speaks!

PoeIt was years ago when I heard my first computerized voice.

My father–a mechanical engineering professor–had always been uncommonly computer-literate and had encouraged the same in his family. (Incidentally, that’s Edgar Allen Poe in the picture; not my father, though they do look a bit the same.)

To that end, he bought primitive home computers for us when the technology was still in its infancy.

One of these had a primitive, robotic, computerized voice that could "read" texts on the screen.

It was awful.

At least by contemporary standards.

As part of my recent audiobooks quest, I realized that the computer voices that are now available were undoubtedly much better than the clunky computer voices I had known in real life or heard on radio and TV shows.

I had no idea.

The voices curently available are not just better, they are a world of difference.

Let me show you:

Currently the top-of-the-line voices are the NaturalVoices from AT&T and available for about $30. You can buy and download them for use with programs like TextAloud. Though they’re still not perfect, they are head and shoulders above what you’re probably familar with.

HERE’S NATURAL VOICE "MIKE" READING EDGAR ALLEN POE’S POEM "THE RAVEN." (.mp3 format)

I made this .mp3 file myself using "Mike," TextAloud, and the public-domain text of "The Raven."

Poetry is a particular challenge for artificial voices due to its atypical cadence, but you’ll be amazed at how well "Mike" does with "The Raven." Take a listen!

As good as computerized voices are now, I can imagine how good they’re goint to be in the future:

  • Already the voices that are available are staring to vary by accent. You can buy voices, for example, that have British or Indian accents. Soon you’ll be able to buy voices that have Texas, Boston, New York, or Georgia accents. (This is just a diversification of what is already happening.)
  • You’ll be able to input sheet music and have the voices sing to you in realistic fashion. (This is actually already being done, but is not yet commercially available to my knowledge.)
  • You’ll be able to read a prepared text and so reverse-engineer your own voice so that you’ll be able to read texts to yourself.
  • You’ll be able to plug your TiVo into your home computer and have it reverse-engineer voices from telvision so that, in no time, Captain Katherine Janeway will be reading you Jane Austen novels.

I can’t wait.

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Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

7 thoughts on “Mike Speaks!”

  1. One of the major difficulties I would think is that when you say a particular word, how you say it depends on the words around it and also the “mood” that you are trying to get across. Ultimately, you would want a text-to-speech computerized voice to be able to be a storyteller. Getting excited when the text covers action, whispering when there’s a quiet part of the story and so on. That will be awesome when they accomplish that.

  2. The only text-to-speech I’ve fiddled with is the one free at Project Gutenberg — and it is pretty rough. Still, it is simply amazing technology! I remember doing some research back in the late 1980s on text-to-voice, consulting with folks at Bell Labs, and they said it would be decades before it was readily available. They were wrong!
    ‘thann

  3. OK, NOW you’re in trouble! This TextAloud stuff is just too nifty — I have a feeling that I will be recording my own books now (getting the classics FREE at Project Gutenberg…). Oh, my.
    Thanks!
    ‘thann

  4. There’s an uncanny resemblence between Edgar Allen Poe’s straightbacked-arm’s folded posture in the above photo and the one of yourself at the top of the page,are you sure you’re not related 😉
    God Bless.

  6. WARNING! WARNING! Obnoxious Mac user about engage in extreme platform proselytism and operating system apologetics! WARNING!
    …and available for about $30. You can buy and download them for use with programs like TextAloud.
    Or available for free with Mac OS X. It’s built into the operating system, so you can listen to any piece of text on the screen read to you, from any program–even inside PDFs (joy!). I’m listening to your blog post being read to me right now. There’s also a choice of 22 different voices, including one that sounds human, one that sounds like a pipe organ and one that sounds like an android. Neato.
    Read about it here:
    http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/speech/
    and here:
    http://tinyurl.com/4l5zl
    This feature has been around for years on Mac.
    This “new” speech technology must be great for those with vision disabilities.

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