Now I Remember
Radio Gutenberg
I've mentioned Project Gutenberg before. They take public domain printed works and make them available to the universe for free. They have a new aspect, Radio Gutenberg, which uses a computer to render a specially marked up version of their works into synthesized voices. Their computer currently generates 22 voices with a variety of inflections and three stage positions, stereo left, center and right.
Note that the site linked to above will give you an audio feed from the computer system. I'm not sure what their schedule is, but they are performing a variety of works, not all of which is Shakespeare. I imagine there are announcements on the regular Project Gutenberg site. Radio Gutenberg is still in its infancy, with both the software and the mark-up language being used subject to modification and improvement. It is impressive enough now. It could become spectacular.
Imagine what it could be like in just a few short years when PG reaches 10,000 books if they can automate much of the mark-up of the speech synthesis and package the program so the home user could have his own system read any of those books to him from a single DVD-R disk.
It could happen.
Comments (1)
I can't imagine a computer-synthesized reading of anything that requires interpretative ability and imagination would be tolerable.