[CQ-Contest] Improving voice recordings for phone contests

[k2qmf at juno.com]

Isn't the advancement of the state of the art just great!!!

Wish I could be around in 50 years to see and hear what contesting
will be like....

73,
K2QMF



On Fri, 8 Mar 2013 05:25:19 -0800 (PST) Rudy Bakalov
<r_bakalov at yahoo.com> writes:
> Have you guys tried using AT&T Labs' text to speech site? See 
> http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php  You won't be 
> using your own voice, but at the very least the voice will be 
> consistent. I am not a SSB fan, but do want to get into SSB contests 
> and have been toying with the idea of recording it all with a 
> text-to-speech tools. For call signs, my thought is to make them 
> sound more natural by identifying the top unique prefixes and 
> recording dedicated files for them (e.g., W1, DL5, S50, etc.).
> 
> 
> Rudy N2WQ
> 
> 
> ________________________________
>  From: Björn SM0MDG <bjorn at sm0mdg.com>
> To: CQ Contest <cq-contest at contesting.com> 
> Sent: Friday, March 8, 2013 5:05 AM
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Improving voice recordings for phone 
> contests
>  
> On 7 mar 2013, at 13:30, Pete Smith N4ZR <n4zr at contesting.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> > Before last weekend's contest, I had a chance to experiment a bit 
> with my voice recordings.  One of the problems I have always had is 
> that when I try to enunciate clearly I always slow down, and the 
> resulting recording lacks the urgency you expect in a contest 
> situation. I also always notice stations whose recorded and live 
> audio don't sound anything alike, and wanted to minimize that as 
> much as possible.
> > 
> > I use Audacity, excellent freeware recording software, but this 
> time around I "discovered" its "Change Tempo" function, which speeds 
> up speech without changing the pitch or timbre.  The results are 
> wonderful - you can speed up any recording 10 or 20 percent at a 
> time, and it sounds completely natural, just faster.
> > 
> > *listen and adjust the tempo (on the same Enhance menu) for the 
> effect I want.  Repeat these 4 steps for each recorded message.
> 
> I used the same methodology for the recordings I made for CQ160 SSB 
> where I had to go "silent". I voiced in normal speed (or slightly 
> below normal), articulating clearly and used about 20-30% tempo 
> increase. I would be interested to hear others "best practice" on 
> the amount of speed increase.
> 
> A sample exchange of mine is posted on the SE0X blog, go to 
> www.se0x.info in the CQ160 SSB update and listen to the audio file.
> 
> Another benefit of voicing all prompts is that exchanges are kept to 
> the essentials keeping the rate high. Of course this can only happen 
> if voice prompts are clear and easy to receive by the other station. 
> The benefit is probably higher in a contest with a predictable 
> exchange leaving only the call to constructed on the fly by N1MM.
> 
> 73 de Björn,
> SM0MDG
> VP2MSW
> V21BM
> SE0X
> 
> 
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