Who should voice the USS Enterprises computers?

[intrinsical]

jefferiestubes8 wrote:

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The problem is the inflection would not always be correct. The larger the library with more options for inflection of the same word or group of words the better.

My alma mater does a lot of research on natural language translation, including text-to-speech generation. I was taught enough to know that the bad inflection is simply due to the TTS algorithm occasionally choosing the wrong inflection. State of the art TTS now has a 98% to 99% accuracy at picking the right inflections so its not as bad as it was in the past. And at worst case, Paramount can simply hire a linguist to manually correct the 1% to 2% wrongly encoded inflections before getting the software to produce Majel's voice.

[Matt85]

i cant remember what her voice sounds like i dont usuly have the volume up that load for thoughs kind of films.

[spiff628]

Nichelle Nichols, who else!!!

[Joel_Kirk]

Spork111 wrote:

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I like Susan Gibney (Dr. Leah Brahms from TNG). She does technical and scientific narration very well, and she sounds enough like Majel to have a certain continuity.
http://www.demogrid.com/gibney/

You could also get Ellen McLain (GLaDOS from Portal). Never before has a computer voice been so entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48848ae8Am0

With the way Gibney looks, she needs to be in front of the camera, not as a computer voice...

[vess]

Patrick Stewart.

[jefferiestubes8]

intrinsical wrote:

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natural language translation, including text-to-speech generation. I was taught enough to know that the bad inflection is simply due to the TTS algorithm occasionally choosing the wrong inflection. State of the art TTS now has a 98% to 99% accuracy at picking the right inflections

so its not as bad as it was in the past. And at worst case,

Intrinsical, are you talking about a sythesized virtual voice like something modeled such as a guitar amplifier's distortion or are you talking about using the actual original Majel voice recordings with a TTS interface?

[jefferiestubes8]

At the very least they could gather all the scripts that had computer voice and copy and paste all the computer voice text to a document with the episode # next to each grouping. When the script comes in for Star Trek XII they could at go on a searching expedition for all words needed (and then syllables for anything else). Pull all of the original DAT tapes for those episodes, load them into an audio editing system and cut up the words needed. copy & paste.

[AviTrek]

SilentP wrote:

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Never heard that one, though I've heard that when it came for creating computer voices for military equipment, like aircraft and the like, they chose female voices, since due to the gender imbalance in the armed forces, a female voice would be more noticeable, so having a computer with a female voice would be of benefit.

I remember reading that New York City MTA uses a female voice for information and a male voice for instructions.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

AviTrek wrote:

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I remember reading that New York City MTA uses a female voice for information and a male voice for instructions.

Well, only the newer trains do that. The older ones rely on the conductor to make the announcements, which are pretty much unintelligible. The new trains have prerecorded stuff, like "Stand clear of the closing doors, please!" (male voice) and "The next stop is..." (female voice) So yeah, you're right.

But that reminds me: How about Emma Clarke? She'd make a great computer voice. Especially if she does it like she did on those fake Underground voiceovers which I believe were the reason she got fired.

"Would the gentleman pretending to read a newspaper, but who is actually staring at that woman's chest, please stop. You're not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert."

[FreddyE]

I read somewhere that some train company was using majels voice for internal automated messages.

[Jeyl]

A. It can't be a male voice because the Enterprise herself is a LADY.

B. I go with Kate Mulgrew.

[FreddyE]

I distincly remember that there was a male computer voice in trek at least once. I think it was in TMP.

[AviTrek]

Was the Cardassian voice male?

[SilentP]

Yes it was.

[John Picard]

Tricia Helfer, in that sultry voice she used as Baltar's angel.