[CQ-Contest] Improving voice recordings for phone contests

[Rudy Bakalov]

It is amazing, isn't it! I just found out that you can add extra tags to the text box and play with the way the voice is generated.

For example, select Mike's voice and enter the following:

<prosody rate="+70%"> 
CQ Contest </prosody>
<prosody rate="+20%"> 
November Two Whiskey Queen Portable Victor Echo 3 
</prosody>

Rudy N2WQ



________________________________
 From: "k2qmf at juno.com" <k2qmf at juno.com>
To: r_bakalov at yahoo.com 
Cc: cq-contest at contesting.com 
Sent: Friday, March 8, 2013 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Improving voice recordings for phone contests
 

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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