Shannon's Journal

[Shannon]

Shannon, as a more general question I was wondering if you you use real voice actors or make use of text-to-speech in the process of creating subliminals? And would there be a difference in effectiveness between the two?

I would prefer to use voice talent, but at the moment, that is not a realistic option. It would slow down the creation process so much as to be ridiculous (one program per week, maximum), make the programs much more expensive to produce, and would not allow for the fact that I do not have an audio-clean recording environment. (Voice talents don't usually want to come over at 2-3 am, when it's quiet around here, to start recording.) Otherwise I would have things like phones ringing, car horns honking, children screaming, dogs barking, motorcycles going by, planes, etc. in the recordings almost every take, which would only serve to frustrate the hell out of me and make me lose any and all motivation to actually build programs.

The sane solution, until I can afford a proper recording studio in my home, is to use Text To Voice. There is a minor difference in how effective the two are (natural vocals vs. TTS) but it's not significant enough to be worth worrying about. The difference comes because of the ability of a voice actor to be able to emphasize, emote or inflect in specific ways. But since the subconscious mind is very literal, the difference in end result is minimal in actual impact. Otherwise I wouldn't be using it.