Comments on: "YOU HAVE... THREE... NEW MESSAGES..."

Question: "YOU HAVE... THREE... NEW MESSAGES..."

tamagosan — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:48:50 -0800

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.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:54:11 -0800

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.

By: phunniemee

phunniemee — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:08:01 -0800

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.

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:18:26 -0800

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.

By: chairface

chairface — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:18:11 -0800

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.

By: b33j

b33j — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:22:45 -0800

Does this help?

By: tamagosan

tamagosan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:32:25 -0800

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.

By: MarvinJ

MarvinJ — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:26:46 -0800

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!

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:40:50 -0800

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

By: out of context

out of context — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:16:27 -0800

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.

By: kuppajava

kuppajava — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:12:12 -0800

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...