Jeremy Coulter, Chief Operating Officer of Textic is in the interesting position of being the guinea pig for the first of a range of synthetic voices being developed in conjunction with technology partners, Cereproc.
After spending a speaking-filled week in the recording studio, his recorded voice, comprising some 35,000 words, has now been dissected and its component phonemes used as the basis for a full domain custom voice. Full domain, in this context, means that 'his' artificial voice is now capable of saying anything required of it - in English at any rate.
Working with the Cereproc technical team proved a fascinating experience says Jeremy: "As a non-professional talker I found my voice would remain consistent and indeed functional for a maximum of only 3-4 hours a day. In five days the technical team gathered just about enough information to provide a convincing voice font, but we probably will need to do a bit of enhancement to fine tune some of the emotional intonation.
"Hearing my voice 'say' things I have never actually said is slightly disconcerting but at the same time is an incredibly compelling demonstration of the potential of custom voice fonts in the branding and marketing space".
Jeremy's voice, as with other Cereproc voice fonts, can be deployed with the Textic Talklets system to enable it to add speech to any website.
