assistive technology clinic (voice banking)

[DgtofTNfan]

Wow Rose. Having experimented with ModelTalker with my own voice for my Dad, I have an idea of the amount of time and work you put into the voice and it is definitely worth it. My Dad's voice has softened over the past couple of weeks and I just don't think he has enough voice left to do it. When we tried last there was too much background noise so we will try one more time.
Thanks for sharing.
Dana

 

[rose]

Dana,

Do what you can to damp the sound down in the room he records in. I had every pillow we own (literally) stacked up in the windows, pulled the shades down over them to hold them from becoming an avalanche. Then hung quilts over the curtain rods in front of the "pillow wall".

If the room is quiet enough, he should not have to project his voice at all. You could hear how soft my natural voice is in that one example recording ~ it was "shouting" for me to do that for the forum to have for comparison, and yet my voice was not too soft for the MT to accept. It did not seem to matter to MT if my voice broke up during a word, it was more picky about the word starting clearly enough.

The recording process was very lengthy, lots of attempts that's for sure. If he can get into the cadence of making the inventory, it will get easier after he gets past the first part, which is the expressive section, and can do the more monotone stuff. Maybe, anything he has trouble with, he just skips over and goes to the next word or phrase, he could get at least 70% done. I think that's what they say they need to make an acceptable voice.

Or, if your dad can at least get the test sample inventory accepted by MT, he can skip over much of the inventory needed to make the synthetic voice, and add as many custom words and phrases as he is able. I wish I'd done more of them.

good luck! let us know if you can get him to try it.

 

[rose]

This is the text from post #89 that I copy and pasted into the Model Talker program. I did make slight changes to the text, I spelled "Model Talker" out, as it seemed that if I were really saying it aloud, I would not have abbreviated it.



The more sentences I strung together, the less smooth it sounded, but, I think when a person is in a conversation, they don't necessarily have to say a lot at a time. If a person wanted to make a longer type statement for some type of occasion, (toasting at a wedding, for example) they could work on getting the words to flow together ahead of time. I don't remember what it was that I changed now, but I did take a couple of words out that seemed to be said too fast by MT, and weren't needed anyway.


The link to hearing MT say what is in the blue italics (above) is a couple of posts down.

 

[BarryG]

Rose,

Barry.... what about someone in your family making a model talker voice for you? Does your son sound like you, or do you have a brother? I know some voices in families sound similar. You could lower the pitch (or whatever) to make it more "yours". Just a thought.

Thanks for the idea, I have no brothers but I do have three sisters! Maybe if one of them could do a really deep voice, but seriously, my son might be able to do it. His voice is deeper that mine but it is a nice voice so I'll talk to him about it. He's not much of a talker so it might take some convincing. My poor wife, I can't talk and Andrew doesn't so she has to do it all! I have bought a license for the NextUp talker program and it comes with AT&T Mike which is the best that I've found so far so for the time being I'll be Mike on the phone and Ryan in person. Keep em guessing! :twisted:

Barry

 

[mare]

Rose,

I want to thank you for starting this thread, and to all who posted. The information is so valuable.

My husband just said to me "I think I'm having trouble with my voice". The fact is , I have noticed this for awhile. I would describe it as "garbled", not slurred.

But, because of your sharing, I was able to say to him, "it's OK, here's what we need to do". As Joel says "embrace technology"!

I will have him check out the Model Talker and E-triloquist programs; we talked about starting sooner rather than later; and we will check with the clinic about these programs.

On a personal note, I thank you all for your candor, your courage, your wit- you have no idea how you have sustained me this past year.

You are ALL daily in my prayers !

 

[GlenBrittle]

Hey everybody ... I just got my VOICE from Model Talker.

I dont think that I put enough custom phrases in , they sound awesome , just the way I do now.

The voice I received sounds like me , but strained. I am playing with the settings now and its getting closer.

Rose , can you PM me your current settings ?

Overall , I am excited , I will have a voice when mine has shutdown. WooHoo !

Would I recommend this to anyone? Hell Yeah ! Its free , just requires some quiet time to record your voice. First thing in the morning was best for me , before I got tired.

Glen

 

[John1]

Glen,

Congrats on getting it done. Could you tell what microphone you used, where you got it and how you liked it? I'm finding it a bit difficult to find a Canadian source.

John

 

[rose]

Mare,

I'm very happy to have helped you be prepared for what can come next with your husband. Please let us know how it goes.

Glen, ~ just fabulous! I will send you a message when I find what my settings actually are (I wrote them down somewhere.... but..... ) it may not be until tomorrow that you hear from me.

John, I think I posted earlier which microphone I used, the info is probably a few pages back in this thread. (I realize you were asking Glen, as you guys are both Canadians.... )

 

[GlenBrittle]

Hey John,

I used a Tritton AX PRO gamers headset .

Its a little overboard on price unless you are a gamer that must always be looking to have something better. I have had to curtail my spending on this hobby as I dont have the reflexes I used to have for online gaming.

Glen

 

[mare]

Thanks, Rose!

 

[hopingforcure]

Glen,
My son has the thing you are talking about, I swear we literally have a car in video games. Wish we could drive those games though. My son think's he a soldier from playing Call of Duty 4 so much, (yah that is the best one)... so he assures me..

 

[John1]

Thanks Glen and Rose. Ouch, $200 for a microphone. I may have to take up gaming if I get it. Don't have enough hours in the day as it is though. Rose, your microphone, the Sennheiser, is not available in Canada and Newegg no longer has it in stock. Amazon carries another gaming mic, the Sennheiser PC 350 Gaming Headset which I could use for music even if my voice recording doesn't work out so I may go for that.

 

[rose]

Today was a very bad voice day for me, and it spurred me on to work with my model talker synthetic voice program some more.

I've gotten my synthetic voice to sound very very (YAY!) much like I do. One of the tricks I've discovered, is that when a sentence is constructed, sometimes a word stands out, too loud, or different pitch, sometimes due to it being a custom word that I either recorded singly or within a phrase. The word "I" tends to not fit within the cadence of many sentences. (but "I've" or "I'm" is fine) ~ To compensate, if I type "I" as "aye" its just perfect. Also, entering words we normally say closely together when speaking, into compound words when typed, helps with the cadence. I think it has to do with the surrounding words, as far as certain words not fitting in (xuch as example above) I just haven't figured out why sometimes "I" is fine, and othertimes, it needs to be typed as "aye".

I'm truly encouraged at the level of quality I've been able to get my synthetic voice to, as far as not only sounding like me, but also being easily understood.

I just wish the settings that I can adjust would stay set from one session to the next. A few seem to stay until I try another configuration, but others disappear each time I close the MT program, and have reverted back to "factory settings" when I reopen the MT.

Now see, if this forum had an audio "chat" room, we could chat with our natural or fake voices, Barry could of course join in with "Ryan" doing the speaking for him, we'd play nice.

John, I agree its a lot to pay for a headset, maybe like you said, if you could find another purpose for it, it would help to justify the cost. On the other hand, if you're able to save your voice successfully, that in itself would make it worth while, but you won't know if you'll be able to until after you make the microphone purchase.

 

[PDaddy]

Hey "Rose" My Dynavox came with the phone option, can you imagine what a phone call between us?

 

[BarryG]

Rose, I've talked to Ryan and he's ready whenever you and PDaddy are! I know what you mean about the pronunciation of some words by speech programs. I have three programs on my various devices, Palmtop Impact on my Dynavox Palmtop3, E-triloquist and Next-Up talker on my desktop and laptop. All three need help in saying some common words and even letters, for instance sometimes you want the letter A to come out as in cat and other times you want it to come out as eh (as in Canadian eh?) and you have to go into the pronunciation editor to set it up. I've even done some pronunciation editing of choice four letter words for when Ryan, or Mike or David (my split personalities) want to get rude. And of course I had to make them say Zed not Zee:lol:

Anyway, Glen and Rose, I'm glad that you guys are able to get your own voices and keep getting the word out to everyone to do it before it's too late!