Lately I have received several promotions for software designed to take a text file and convert it into natural speech. The idea is one can produce narration or other oral information without hiring a professional narrator. Although I will get to certain issues related to text to speech, it will be useful to begin with…
PAPERS-1: Simultaneity and Polyphony in Speech Based Audio Art
As I looked through older published papers of mine I realized that several went into depth on topics that I have only touched upon, if at all, in my recent blog posts. Most of these were done for scholarly conferences (and reflect a scholarly writing style required of this kind of work) and were peer…
PODCAST 2 – SERIOUS PRODUCTION
In my earlier post on podcasts, I mentioned I would do more posts about podcasting. I got off on other topics, but a very good panel presented at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) National Convention held in NYC in late October (2017) piqued my interest and has motivated me to produce another post on this…
TALK RADIO
This post is not about the content of talk radio programs, but about the sound of talkers on talk radio, especially those not in the studio where the program originates. This will not be an extremely complex technical article (I hope) though some technical material needs to be presented in a simplified (perhaps over-simplified) way. If…
THE UNUSUAL HISTORY OF THE AUDIOBOOK
Book review: The Untold Story of the Talking Book by Matthew Rubery Harvard University Press (November 14, 2016), 384 pages I thought I knew all about “talking books.” When I was a child my mother was hired by a blind attorney in our neighborhood to come over and read to him. Later I was aware…