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AND YOU THOUGHT VOICE-TRACKING WOULD END RADIO....

R

Radio55

Guest
Holy Cow! I found this link on another page ... Here is the future, boys and girls.....

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

AT&T has created text based technology. Just type in the text you want (say a liner, song titles, promo) and bam! The "announcer" reads it back PERFECTLY!

I can see it now, "You're resume is very impressive Mr. Morning Guy, but, WE DON'T NEED ANNOUNCERS ANYMORE!"

Scary stuff. Check it out, it is pretty darn amazing.
 
FYI I found this under Radio TV Topics, #3, Hartford Radio/Clear Channel....
 
Radio55 said:
Holy Cow! I found this link on another page ... Here is the future, boys and girls.....
AT&T has created text based technology. Just type in the text you want (say a liner, song titles, promo) and bam! The "announcer" reads it back PERFECTLY!
Click to expand...

This type of technology seems to be in use on the National Weather Service emergency alert stations that many of us monitor in our homes. Even when I put on my 'announcers mask' I have a bit of southern accent buried in my speech pattern. Everytime we get a weather Watch or Warning, I run to the receiver to hear the robot slip the "transistor accent" in on a few words. There is a good laugh in every announcement.
 
Radio55 said:
Holy Cow! I found this link on another page ... Here is the future, boys and girls.....

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

AT&T has created text based technology. Just type in the text you want (say a liner, song titles, promo) and bam! The "announcer" reads it back PERFECTLY!

I can see it now, "You're resume is very impressive Mr. Morning Guy, but, WE DON'T NEED ANNOUNCERS ANYMORE!"

Scary stuff. Check it out, it is pretty darn amazing.
Click to expand...

This has been around for a few years. It's the same thing as it was when I heard it for the first time about 3 or 4 years ago. I think our jobs are safe unless you sound like a coputer generated voice. ;D
 
This one is actually better than the ATT text to speech. Sure, it sounds a little "mechanical" but imagine a similar site with "radio" inflections in the voices. It could be built with a "choice" of A to Z ... i.e. saying the "K" in a call letter with a little punch or more relaxed. This technology is new, but even the way it is, it sounds pretty good. Put a liner in there and listen.... spooky. Forty years ago, station automation was clunky (remember Carousel Carts anyone?....the old IGM automation with the push pin programming?). Stations tried it and it just sounded too slow, and, well, clunky. And when the tape on a cart got wound up in a pinch roller, whew! But today, let them little computers fly with voice tracking. It's here, and text to speech is the next technology. If you have a small station with access to great voices, you type in your little Swap Shop promo and presto, it sounds really great. Just add music and stir!
 
Radio55 said:
This one is actually better than the ATT text to speech. Sure, it sounds a little "mechanical" but imagine a similar site with "radio" inflections in the voices. It could be built with a "choice" of A to Z ... i.e. saying the "K" in a call letter with a little punch or more relaxed. This technology is new, but even the way it is, it sounds pretty good. Put a liner in there and listen.... spooky. Forty years ago, station automation was clunky (remember Carousel Carts anyone?....the old IGM automation with the push pin programming?). Stations tried it and it just sounded too slow, and, well, clunky. And when the tape on a cart got wound up in a pinch roller, whew! But today, let them little computers fly with voice tracking. It's here, and text to speech is the next technology. If you have a small station with access to great voices, you type in your little Swap Shop promo and presto, it sounds really great. Just add music and stir!
Click to expand...


Actually, they've had this technology for about 15 years. I don't mean the choppy, mechanical sounding IVR regurgitation. In fact, I heard a sample of this stuff as far back as '95 or '96. It was supposed to be kept an industry secret at the time but somehow one of our guys at Federated Media got hold of it. It was creepy to hear a computer program that sounded human and could ape any North American dialect or accent without even the slightest hint of being 'artificial'. In fact, this technology is already in limited use in the network medium. The only thing between AI and us is whats left of AFTRA. In another 10 years....forgettaboutit!

O'Shea
 
Bob Oshea said:
Actually, they've had this technology for about 15 years. I don't mean the choppy, mechanical sounding IVR regurgitation. In fact, I heard a sample of this stuff as far back as '95 or '96. It was supposed to be kept an industry secret at the time but somehow one of our guys at Federated Media got hold of it. It was creepy to hear a computer program that sounded human and could ape any North American dialect or accent without even the slightest hint of being 'artificial'. In fact, this technology is already in limited use in the network medium. The only thing between AI and us is whats left of AFTRA. In another 10 years....forgettaboutit!
Click to expand...

Let's assume for a moment that your vision of the future is 'on target'. Golden voices, varieties of voices ripe for the picking from the transistor-orchards.

There was this period in radio, beginning maybe in the mid 1950s when the age of the spontaneous expression of an announcer turned loose and even given access to the knobs and switches previous owned only by the engineer species went to war with the traditional old block-programmed network anchored radio of the 30s and 40s. This new-kid-on-the-block ruled the airwaves until sometime approaching 1990 or so. Soon the knobs and switches would be handed over to the automation machines and already the spontaneous expressions were being turned over to little lists and little stacks of cue cards. DO NOT THINK. DO AS YOU ARE TOLD.

So we have one last frontier that is up for grabs under your scenario, Mr. O'Shea. Who gets to create the stream or document of ASCII characters that will hour by hour, day by day be fed into the golden voices from the transistor-orchards. Are there other orchards that will have their transistors programmed to create these scripts, or is it possible, heaven forbid, that some artistic human souls will crowd into the picture to actually type up scripts as joyous and refreshing as the home-made from scratch apple pies that my wife bakes.

This could be your worst nightmare. AFTRA replaced by SWAG (Screen Writers and Actors Guild?)

We all go through life with this incredible zest to live. We dread growing old. We deny growing old. And yet when I look at the changes going on all around me, maybe the 'coming out' party at the funeral home almost begins to have appeal.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
Bob Oshea said:
Actually, they've had this technology for about 15 years. I don't mean the choppy, mechanical sounding IVR regurgitation. In fact, I heard a sample of this stuff as far back as '95 or '96. It was supposed to be kept an industry secret at the time but somehow one of our guys at Federated Media got hold of it. It was creepy to hear a computer program that sounded human and could ape any North American dialect or accent without even the slightest hint of being 'artificial'. In fact, this technology is already in limited use in the network medium. The only thing between AI and us is whats left of AFTRA. In another 10 years....forgettaboutit!
Click to expand...

Let's assume for a moment that your vision of the future is 'on target'. Golden voices, varieties of voices ripe for the picking from the transistor-orchards.

There was this period in radio, beginning maybe in the mid 1950s when the age of the spontaneous expression of an announcer turned loose and even given access to the knobs and switches previous owned only by the engineer species went to war with the traditional old block-programmed network anchored radio of the 30s and 40s. This new-kid-on-the-block ruled the airwaves until sometime approaching 1990 or so. Soon the knobs and switches would be handed over to the automation machines and already the spontaneous expressions were being turned over to little lists and little stacks of cue cards. DO NOT THINK. DO AS YOU ARE TOLD.

So we have one last frontier that is up for grabs under your scenario, Mr. O'Shea. Who gets to create the stream or document of ASCII characters that will hour by hour, day by day be fed into the golden voices from the transistor-orchards. Are there other orchards that will have their transistors programmed to create these scripts, or is it possible, heaven forbid, that some artistic human souls will crowd into the picture to actually type up scripts as joyous and refreshing as the home-made from scratch apple pies that my wife bakes.

This could be your worst nightmare. AFTRA replaced by SWAG (Screen Writers and Actors Guild?)

We all go through life with this incredible zest to live. We dread growing old. We deny growing old. And yet when I look at the changes going on all around me, maybe the 'coming out' party at the funeral home almost begins to have appeal.
Click to expand...


Out of genuine concern for your well being, I want you to lay down the gun and dial 911. Tell them where you are and sit in the lotus position unitl they get there. Soon you'll be in a nice facility with clean sheets and some badly needed medications. My worst day alive is still going to be better than my best day under a headstone.

O'Shea
 
Bob Oshea said:
Out of genuine concern for your well being, I want you to lay down the gun and dial 911. Tell them where you are and sit in the lotus position unitl they get there. Soon you'll be in a nice facility with clean sheets and some badly needed medications. My worst day alive is still going to be better than my best day under a headstone.
Click to expand...

The meds are working fine most days. ;D

But when the weather starts kicking up here in North Georgia and the thundershowers that seem to be wearing tornado fingerprints come running through in choo-choo train tandems and the weather radio starts blaring out for attention, and I run to listen to that voice..... THAT voice.... not only is THAT voice the fruit of a transistor orchard.... the orchard was obviously cloned from a volunteer grove of Northwest Arkansas pasture persimmons!!!!

If we don't get the weather radio unplugged quickly, and the stand-by power 9 volt battery out quickly... and I overdose on that voice.... that's when I reach under the mattress and pull out the catalogs from Granite and Other Fine Stones, Inc." ::)
 
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