Posts by BenWilson
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The quality difference in the voicing seems large, but then look how many folk regard MP3 as acceptable quality for music?
Many many many. But not many will accept a tone-deaf robot singing their favorite rock song, no matter how high the fidelity.
Ben Wilson - Rob Stowell back on page 13 put it best -it is potemtially already possible to convert a TTS function to a downloadable good-quality audio file...and new developements are in the offing-
bang go audio-books if they arnt ringfenced (which they still are...)
I think Rob was suggesting the other way around. Speech to text, ripped from the text to speech. Seems like the hard way to me, though, no easier than the more usual way of ripping text - scanning + text recognition.
But taking your interpretation, that TTS can make a good-quality audio file, I can only say that the potentially possible has still not been actually realized, and may be a very long way off.
If it isn't, then yes, the audio book royalties might suffer. Then again, they might not. People who like audio books, may actually like them as works of art in themselves. I certainly do, on the few that I've listened to, it was not enough to have even a human drone reading the story. You want a really talented vocalist. If you can continue to sew up the right to profit from a human making an audio book, then you may lose next to nothing.
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Then might I suggest the simple expedient of wearing a hat without anything written on it?
Sure. Having something written there really is asking for it. Come to think of, I really should blank out the word Billabong on my T-shirt, in case people think I'm really into surfing. Last thing I need is a belligerent drunk demanding I know who the current surfing stars are.
Heh, I liked some of those hats. But such hats make even more of a statement, IMHO, than some weak logo on a cheap hat. They say "I picked out this expensive hat because I really like it". Which, if it's a still a shit hat, is even worse!
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Yeah, I read a bit more after I asked about that -- those audiobook rates are clearly very valuable to authors, although that's only been a relatively recent thing, no?
And those should probably not be taken away. But is t2s actually going to do that? The difference between t2s and real voice is not like the difference between high and low def TV. It's bigger even than the difference between color and black-and-white TV. To me, listening to t2s is roughly on par with trying to watch an original Baird TV. Which is to say, it's bloody awesome if it's the only way, and bloody awful when set against the modern alternative. The crack it's going to fill is giving speech to anything that doesn't already have a real audiobook for it.
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Leo definitely has a way with words. And surely on Friday, pussy jokes are allowed.
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and more effort put into fidelity to the spirit of the original
Sounds like a big ask.
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Jackie I agree with that sentiment on pseudonyms. But there is a flipside to using them - people will take you at face value. Expecting anything else is also not good internet etiquette. It's all or nothing with pseudonyms.
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rob, I don't see PA like that either, but there may be other opinions ;-). Perhaps I was projecting a feeling on you that is not there. My comment is based on reading many of your posts on many topics. It's pretty hard to avoid the tone of someone arguing against a crowd, when that is exactly what is happening. But I don't think it's a tone that helps much, so I'm letting you know that you're not always alone in your thoughts.
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but you would have to be slightly insane to take it up here seeing as how divided the simple subject of media seems to makes people.
Insane or pugnacious. Sometimes there's not much difference.
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Technically astounding
As in, good CG? Was nothing else good?
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Sometimes people just wear hats to keep the sun off, or their head warm, or because they are bald. What's written on the hat is about as important as what's written on their socks.
But getting bitter on hats is an old tradition. In Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) there's a bit about how at one time it was considered a very funny joke to say "My, what a shocking bad hat" to anyone at all, and open season was often declared on the hat. For him to have written at the length he did, I figure he must have had a really shit hat. But the point he makes still stands today, that it's really quite strange how much we care about other people's hats.
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