"YOU HAVE... THREE... NEW MESSAGES..."

July 13, 2008 7:48 PM

Where can I find samples of old (circa 1997) answering machine speech?

Specifically, I'm looking for more samples of this voice:

http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=3465

I've scoured the internets pretty thoroughly. Is there software out there that can reproduce this voice?

I may just have to go to a junk store and find an old machine.

posted by tamagosan to technology (10 comments total)

I have a Panasonic cordless phone/answering machine purchased in 2007 that has a very similar sounding voice. I don't think they have made them much more human sounding in the intervening ten years. You can go get a cheap one at Wal-mart.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:54 PM on July 13, 2008

Burhanistan's right. I have a phone/answering machine that was purchased in '04 that has a woman's voice but is just as machiney sounding.

Your sample reminds me of this ca. mid-eighties talking cube clock that my grandma use to have. I bet the same "guy" did the voice work.

Also something you could look into would be a text-to-speech application like this one here. By punctuating your sentences creatively, you can work out the idiosyncratic timing that the machine voices always have.
posted by phunniemee at 8:08 PM on July 13, 2008

Agreed on the "one guy" theory. I had this talking globe toy as a kid, and the voice it had sounds identical to the one in the clip.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:18 PM on July 13, 2008

If you can find a mac, you'll find it has a range of various voices for text-to-speech. Some of them have that retro sound.
posted by chairface at 10:18 PM on July 13, 2008

Does this help?
posted by b33j at 11:22 PM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I've found a few sites like the ATT research site a couple people linked too. They're too natural. None of the mac voices are right, either. I'm basically not going to be satisified with any voice other than the one I linked to.
posted by tamagosan at 12:32 AM on July 14, 2008

This came up on google using "retro text to speech" as a search term. dectalk Classic

Not sure if it will repro exactly what you need but it seems to be able to do a lot of variences, check out the "Fun" and "Examples" folders in the zip. Moses.txt it great!
posted by MarvinJ at 4:26 AM on July 14, 2008

This may sound a little crazy, but I recently discovered that I can mimic creepy synthesized voices like this perfectly. If you send me a script, I'd be happy to record it for you.

Ok, a LOT crazy because ever since I discovered it, I talk that way ALL the time
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 5:40 AM on July 14, 2008

Windows XP comes with a screen reader called Microsoft Narrator which sounds very similar. Especially when you force. Pauses. And! Inflections? with punctuation. Possibly more entertaining than the bundled games when you open up a blank text file and make the computer say dirty, dirty things.
posted by out of context at 10:16 AM on July 14, 2008

I have a Friday (FR-2000) by Bogen. Totally has the voice you seek! People often comment on it when they leave a message. These units are sometimes hard to come by, though, as they were pretty pricey back in the day...
posted by kuppajava at 1:12 PM on July 14, 2008