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

[Reid Kimball]

It all depends on the player's hearing abilities. I have more trouble
with female voices than male in noisy environments. In a quiet
environment, both are fine.

-Reid

On 6/1/06, Sander H. <news at ebass.nl> wrote:
>
> 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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