Hearing Voices

[Karl Toon]

Okay, so it's normally just my own voice, but if like me you get fed up with hearing your own voice for your characters, and find it just impossible to rely on others to do a decent recording for or with you, then you will have inevitably turned to text to speech at some point. Argh! I hear many cry. You shouldn't do that! Well, I used to agree, but I've now found one that isn't as ropey as many of the older ones. I should point out that I am not affiliated in any way at all with these.
My winner is currently ElevenLabs https://elevenlabs.io/speech-synthesis
My favourite voice has got to be good old Essex Dave.
So, question! Do you have a secret place you go to for your voices (paid or free)?

[Ronbo]

You might want to check out https://fakeyou.com/. It's a little hit-or-miss, but I've had some luck with it and they have quite a range of voices to choose from, Alan Rickman being one of my favorites. It's subscription, but you can use it for free if you don't mind being put into a queue and waiting for your turn.

I should add that I also use Audacity and Ocenaudio, which are free audio editing apps that offer effects like pitch and speed adjustments, though I mostly use Melodyne (not free) which does just about anything, including formants.

[jahnocli]

Speechalo is worth looking at...

[wsterdan]

My winner is currently ElevenLabs https://elevenlabs.io/speech-synthesis
My favourite voice has got to be good old Essex Dave.
So, question! Do you have a secret place you go to for your voices (paid or free)?

I'm a huge fan of play.ht, their "ultra realistic" voices. They're the ones I'm using now in my 2D animations (Starship Hrimfaxi) and will probably use with Moho as I switch over from Cartoon Animator.

I did start looking into elevenlabs last month and it looks very impressive (I love "Fin") and will test them out more in the coming weeks.

[Greenlaw]

I use Melodyne to make my own voice sound like a teenage me. For example, Sergeant's dialog in the animated Brudders episodes is recorded that way. The neat thing with Melodyne is that you can adjust formats in speech, which is necessary to prevent the 'chipmunk' effect.

I also keep mental notes of what my family, friends, and neighbors sound like in hopes of recruiting them for personal projects.

I haven't used services like Fiver, but I've heard of animators hiring voice talent for their personal and indie projects that way. (I should look into that.)

[Greenlaw]

I bought a voice changer program a while back but never actually used it. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'll make some time for it. If it works convincingly, I'll post some examples.

Not long ago, I found a website that used AI to alter uploaded .wav or .aif files. I think they charged by the file and processing time. I don't remember what that site was called but it's probably easy to Google. (Ok, off to search myself.)

Update: Oh, there are a bunch of these sites now, and I don't know which one I was looking at.

[rocky53204]

https://ttsvoicewizard.com/
Free, open source... try the many voice actor voices in the tik tok voices selection...
Upgrade to premium voices available but a lot of free ones offered.
You have to change a setting to save them to .wav files... otherwise works immediately without aggravation.
Does not install itself in windows... download, find the .exe and click it.
Best freebie I have found in this category.

Regards, Rocky

[Karl Toon]

Thanks for all your answers. There are a few good links there worth looking at. Keep them coming though people.