Input text:<\/strong> a difficult one, the complex essay “Cats and Dogs” (1926) by H.P. Lovecraft. Pulp fiction, with simple-sentences and obvious words, might work far better. But this was a stress-test.<\/p>\n Voice used:<\/strong> Ivona ‘Brian’ (British English, 22hz, about $50). ‘Brian’ does not flow across words as smoothly and blandly as the default Windows 8 Microsoft Zira does. As a result Brian sometimes has occasional mis-emphasis of words and a slight slurring, yet is far more expressive in an audiobook than Zira.<\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> The text was read by ‘Brian’ in the text-to-speech software TextAloud 4, with the text read out to a standard MP3 file. <\/p>\n * Speed: Normal. (Why not use the free Balabolka reader? Because it doesn’t offer pause adjustment<\/em> Update: it now offers markup<\/a> to add pauses and pitch shifts<\/em>. Further update: Now you can also set universal pauses).<\/p>\n 2.<\/strong> I loaded the resulting MP3 output file into the free audio editor Audacity. An Equalisation filter was run to try to cut the 5Khz – 7Khz sibilance. The same preset tried to slightly boost 1KHz – 5KHz, for overall speech intelligibility.<\/p>\n 3.<\/strong> The simple free Spitfish De-esser<\/a> was then run inside Audacity, to further reduce sibilance. (Select All | Effect | Spitfish | Apply | Close). This runs far more quickly than Audacity’s native de-essing filter, as well as being simpler to control. You may have problems seeing the download button so here is a direct .ZIP download<\/a>.<\/p>\n 4.<\/strong> Ran the Effects | Limiter, using its default ‘Soft Limit’ preset.<\/p>\n 5.<\/strong> Added Reverb filter, with its default ‘Voice I’ preset.<\/p>\n 6.<\/strong> Ran the Spitfish De-esser again, to make a final attempt to reduce the remaining sibilance. Same settings as before.<\/p>\n 7.<\/strong> Saved as an MP3, 320bk\/s quality, resulting in a 50Mb file for a 42 minute reading.<\/p>\n Incidentally, it’s apparently possible to “chain” these steps (like a Photoshop Action) in Audacity, as a preset, and then play them back automatically. I couldn’t find that option in my Audacity, but that’s perhaps because I have an older version.<\/p>\n Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n The results were fairly listenable, and (once the raspy ‘synthetic voice sibilance’ was reduced) definitely seems like an advance on previous robo-voices. But the test result was certainly not ideal, due to the ‘Brian’ voice’s unnatural unexpected stresses placed on certain words and the slurring of others. It’s rather like listening to a ‘sticky’\/’wobbly’ old cassette tape from the 1980s, and becomes rather wearing after a while. It can result in an aural equivalent of the motion-sickness that one encounters in many videogames. <\/p>\n Perhaps there may be some search-and-replace script that automatically tweaks a text so that ‘Brian’ reads it better, but I couldn’t find one. Simple and immediate global fixes are:<\/p>\n * Change Mr. and Mrs. to Mister<\/em> and Misses<\/em>.
\n* Pitch: -5 (to deepen the voice slightly).
\n* Volume: 100% (perhaps too high, you might also try 70%).
\n* Pauses between sentences: 0.7 seconds (default in TextAloud is 0.5).
\n* Pauses between paragraphs: two seconds.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/sibil.jpg?w=529\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/spitfish.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n* Change capitalised acronyms such as NASA to Nasser<\/em>, or they will be said ‘En-Ay-Ess-Ay’.
\n* Change crunched up hyphenation, such as and “then-as you all know-he did something” to “then – as you all know – he did something”.<\/p>\n