RichardKennaway comments on LessWrong podcasts - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Louie 03 December 2012 08:44AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 03 December 2012 11:41:42PM 0 points [-]

Are you sure you've been comparing good narrators to that TTS voice?

A good narrator is, by definition, superior to a TTS (and as TTS improves, voiceover professionals will have to up their game).

But what is superior to a TTS, though, will vary according to the listener. What I want of a good narrator, for example (and I am moved to post this from having heard various storytellers of fiction), is someone who keeps him- or herself out of the matter, and is simply an intermediary, like a newsreader or simultaneous translator. As far as I'm concerned, it's a voice, not a person. I don't want a person chattering in my ear when what I want is the text. The voiceover artist's job is, in fact, to be a better TTS.

Comment author: DSimon 04 December 2012 07:15:38PM 1 point [-]

As far as I'm concerned, it's a voice, not a person. I don't want a person chattering in my ear when what I want is the text. The voiceover artist's job is, in fact, to be a better TTS.

Hm, that's interesting, because I generally look for just the opposite in podcasts, particularly fiction.

When I read text, the voice in my head emphasizes certain parts and changes tone in response to the content of the text, at a reasonably high level of abstraction (i.e. just looking at the syntax and formatting isn't enough). If a narrator isn't doing that, I have a hard time getting into the reading.