Years ago, I wondered why Apple didn’t release “celebrity” voices for the Mac. I mean, the current generation of voices is sampled rather than synthesized, so why not? Wouldn’t it be cool to have the voice of the Star Ship Enterprise (aka Majel Barrett) coming from your Mac?
More recently, I broached this subject with a VP at Cepstral, maker of some really good voices for the Mac and other platforms. They brushed it off as too expensive.
But that didn’t stop British Telecom. Last year, they debuted a text message service that vocalizes your message and sends it to a landline telephone. And they taped Tom Baker, the 1970s star of “Doctor Who” and currently narrator for “Little Britain” to be the official voice. After long hours in the studio recording huge numbers of phonemes, the system now speaks in Tom Baker’s voice. Listen to samples here.
So, where is the entrepreneur I’ve been waiting for? I’ve wanted to buy a custom, celebrity voice for the better part of a decade now, but no one has filled that niche. C’mon, guys! Majel Barrett? Joanna Lumley? James Earl Jones?
To bad Brando’s dead, how great would it be to spend all that money on a vocie no one could understad… but then again Brad Pitt is alive and well.