ATC Voice

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Thanks Graham :-) That means a lot. It's difficult to get lots of separate wav files to merge into one seamless phrase. A lot of it is dependent on the quality of the original recording. All our voice sets volunteers are keen amateurs and not broadcasting engineers so there will always be a compromise.If only we had the financial resources of Microsoft! :-) Still, what we do give you is a much truer representation of what real-world ATC is like especially when flying outside of FAA areas.If you've been using the default ATC RCv4 will sound different but you soon get used to it I can assure you. Hearing realistic commands still remains the most important aspect of flight.Cheers,

[mmmprod 0]

Email sent Ray ;)

[mmmprod 0]

Ray could you check your email please I experienced problem with the DemoThx

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Mehdi,I've uploaded a zipped version. It's there now.Cheers,

[grajay 2]

I just wonder if there might be a way to accelerate the voices in the same way that Lars M

[jd 57]

i'd be interested in know what he didjd

[grajay 2]

Could always ask him I suppose.

[Guest Adeym]

As one of thousands of people waiting for this product for the lsat year or so, I have to say that those voices have really put me off.Needless to say, ATC talk when spoken quickly can be hard to understand sometimes, but combine that with the way the little segments of speech are put together, it makes it even harder to grasp. I can see that robotic end result getting annoying after a while.I really do hope you try your best to fix this in the future and get it to sound smoother :(Other then that, your product is miles ahead of anything else in this field and I wish you all the best with such a fine add-on!

[martyn 0]

>Other then that, your product is miles ahead of anything else>in this field and I wish you all the best with such a fine>add-on!That's because there ain't no other product in this field, no competition!

[Guest Adeym]

>>Other then that, your product is miles ahead of anything>else>>in this field and I wish you all the best with such a fine>>add-on!>>That's because there ain't no other product in this field, no>competition!>I beg to differ... Vox ATC is one for a start

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Hi Adeym,I'm sorry you feel the voices in RC4 are not to your liking. We tried very hard to make them sound as realistic as we could. I did the vast majority of the processing of them and my aim was to get the voices to sound as close as I could to how real world ATC sounds.I live a few miles away from Manchester Airport in England. Listening to the ATC on my scanner the chatter is not high-fidelity by any means. All lower frequencies are greatly reduced and there is a degree of background noise and some distortion present. So, when I processed the wavs I also removed most of the lower frequencies to try and match those sounds.I don't understand why you feel the sound is 'robotic' since these are real people speaking. Maybe you're too used to the smooth velvety tones of the default ATC with its non-existent ATC rules? I've been listening to the voice sets in RC4 for several months now and they don't sound at all irritating.We did experiment with computer generated voices which I believe are used in VoxATC and we found the results totally unsatisfactory. The move to human voices came as a great relief to the RC team.The problem with ATC is that it's not standard English and a computer program just cannot pronounce many words correctly. No doubt advances will be made with computer generated speech in the future but for now we feel that well recorded and processed human voice wavs have the edge.Thank you for your kind words and perhaps you'll change your mind ;-)Cheers,

[Guest Adeym]

Thanks for your excellent explanation Ray,I do like the voices, it's mearly the way each individual wav is pieced together to make a sentence. ie, 5 seperate wav's used to say the sentence "one one seven decimel five". Personally I think it could be improved so the sentences sound more 'seemless'http://members.lycos.co.uk/electronicplayg...0easydriver.jpg[/image]

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Hi Adeym,Last post before bed!I understand what you mean about multiple wavs being pieced together. It does reply on absolute uniformity of the person recording to speak each wav in an identical way with the same volume. Whilst this is achieved with many of the voices there are some deviations from this perfect world. We are human after all ;-)Something we could consider for the future is recording the whole part of a frequency and the decimal part as single wavs. So, for instance, when 125.95 is enunciated instead of 6 wavs it might be possible to achive it in three. The reason I don't say two is because the decimal point is enunciated as 'point' in FAA areas and 'decimal' in non-FAA areas.This will increase the number of wavs from the already horrendous number and could alienate potential volunteers from recording a set. It's all a fine balancing act between reality and practicality.Cheers,

[Guest dickwu]

Hi Ray,What I think is we don't need to lessen the no. of files used to combine of one sentence. We don't need to make each recording perfect as well, as you said, we are human and we *just can't* speak every word using the same tone, speed, pitch etc....Instead, we should focus on how we to normalize each wave file, e.g. eliminating background noice, changing pitch, speed, tone for each already recorded wave file. I think some professional software like Adobe Audition can do it? just my opinion anyway

[Guest Adeym]

I'm sure it would be hard to get it close to the real thing, but if you have ever played a good football game like Fifa 2006, you'll find just how well individual words can gel well together. Yes, ok its not broken down into very small pieces as you have in RC4, but maybe its techniques could lend you some inspiration into getting your product closer to reality.http://members.lycos.co.uk/electronicplayg...0easydriver.jpg[/image]