Catching Up with the Voice of Macintosh

klktrk writes "In an article from TidBITS, Jeff Carlson interviews the man who inspired the 'Fred' voice known to early Macintosh uses, and fans of Radiohead."

Is this a new record?

[Badge 17]

Seemed to be slashdotted with 1 post.

At my school, all of the Apple computers have had their text-to-speech capability removed - too many AppleScripts involving cursing, or something to that fashion.

Once, I wrote an entire script for a media production specifically for Fred. Of course, this involved spelling phonetically - it never did quite get "Check ell slo vahk ee ya" right.

I got a giant kick out of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush," which had a techno-savvy professor communicating using F

Re:Is this a new record?

[andfarm]

See this [apple.com] documentation on phoneme mode. There's a way to make TTS (text-to-speech) take input as phonemes instead of words: for example, try "[[inpt PHON]]mAYkAXl".

Sorta Ironic

[soapvox]

As apple fools jokes I CLI'd into my co workers OS X box and played fittier happier through the osascript command! Apple and Radiohead, does it get any better?!

MC Hawking

[qengho]

Fred figures greatly in the little-known microphone work of the great physicist Stephen Hawking [mchawking.com]. I particularly recommend the searing F*ck Tha Creationists [imarc.net] . (warning for the bandwidth-challenged: 2.2MB MP3 file).

More productive.

[heldlikesound]

Fitter,happier,moreproductive,
comfortable,
notd rinkingtoomuch,
regularexerciseatthegym
(3daysaw eek),
gettingonbetterwithyourassociateemployeecon tempora ries,
atease,
eatingwell
(nomoremicrowavedinner sandsaturatedfats),
apatientbetterdriver,
asafer car
(babysmilinginbackseat),
sleepingwell
(noba ddreams),
noparanoia,
carefultoallanimals
(neve rwashingspidersdowntheplughole),
keepincontactwit holdfriends
(enjoyadrinknowandthen),
willfrequen tlycheckcreditat(moral)bank(holeinthewa ll),
favorsforfavors,
fondbutnotinlove,
charity standingorders,
onSundaysringroadsupermarket
(no killingmothsorputtingboilingwaterontheants),
carw ash
(alsoonSundays),
nolongerafraidofthedarkormi ddayshadows
nothingsoridiculouslyteenageanddesper ate,
nothingsochildish-atabetterpace,
slowerandm orecalculated,
nochanceofescape,
nowself-employe d,
concerned(butpowerless),
anempoweredandinform edmemberofsociety
(pragmatismnotidealism),
willn otcryinpublic,
lesschanceofillness,
tiresthatgri pinthewet
(shotofbabystrappedinbackseat),
agoodm emory,
stillcriesatagoodfilm,
stillkisseswithsal iva,
nolongeremptyandfranticlikeacattiedtoastick,
that'sdrivenintofrozenwintershit
(theabilitytol aughatweakness),
calm,
fitter,
healthierandmore productive
apiginacageonantibiotics.

Re:More productive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it more creative when you connect all the words together?

So he perfers Victoria's voice? So do I!

[Alex Thorpe]

So let's hear about her!

It is interesting that Stephen Hawking's voice is based on his as well. That voice is also featured on Pink Floyd's song, "Keep Talking", from The Division Bell.

Victoria

[mrpuffypants]

I don't know about everybody else, but all I need to get up in the morning is the sweet, caressing sound of Victoria (High Quality) in my ear.

Re:Victoria

[mbbac]

Why doesn't Apple have any higher quality Macintosh voices in Mac OS X? If you look around on the Web at AT&T and other places you'll find very high quality voice synthesis (and I'm sure you get them on your voice mail quite a bit too). Modern Macs have more than enough power to generate something more realistic than what we've got now.

Anyone? Anyone?

Re:Victoria

[Alan Partridge]

ahh - Victoria High Quality. The only thing that she needs is a gentle stroking of her speed control to bring her up to English pace.

Best

Voice

Ever.

Does Apple spend ANY money on TTS any more, or is this yet another case of Apple Tortoise and Hare a la Newton?

It was all about MacTalk...

[Dark Nexus]

Way back with a Mac Classic.... that brings back memories. I thought that was the coolest thing when I stumbled across it when I was 10 :)

Never knew the name "Fred" though.

Re:It was all about MacTalk...

[cei]

Talking Moose. That's what it's all about.

Air

[Draoi]

Fred also appears on Air's album, '10,000 Hz Legend'. Listen to the track, 'How does it make you feel?'. Victoria also makes a 2-second appearance ...

Track can be heard on Amazon [amazon.com]

Another familiar voice (for anime fans at least..)

[Millennium]

In Serial Experiments Lain, there's a whispering voice used to introduce the title of each episode. That voice is... you guesed it... Whisper from the Mac set of voices.

It's still there in OSX, in fact. Make up your own Lain episode titles!

Re:WTF?

[Joriske]

Nope, but we can be sure that on the Outkast album (intro track) it's definitely the 'the light you see at the end of a tunnel, is the light of a fast approaching train'-voice saying Outkast :-)

Strollin' on the Water

[ChristTrekker]

Bryan Duncan used a Mac to speak the opening lyrics to this song. I'm not familiar enough with the various voices to know which it was, and I'm not at my Mac now. :(

Apoptygma Berzerk...

[G3ek]

Uses a few Mac voices, "Victoria" included, in a few of their songs. Namely "Kathy's Song". Damn April/Apple Fool's day! I read the whole article thinking "cool..." then i listened to the audio sample....that bastard! ;)

Um, notice the date...?

[cubal]

"Published 01 Apr 03"

Then listen to the recording of the interview... it seems eerily IDENTICAL to if, say, I select the text and hit "Speech->Start Speaking"

(Not to mention "Apple couldn't get the Speech Synthesis working in time, so they just recorded my voice...")

Can anyone say "April Fools"?

Any good site to get Macintalk voices?

[Arcturax]

Apple's had this speech technology for years and years now, but I've always wondered if anyone has made any new voices? Is there a tutorial out there on how to make your own voices for it?

I've always thought it would be cool to have the Star Trek computer voice for my Mac ;)

So, are there any sites out there for this? I've had no luck finding them via google...