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Kathleen Savino   —   June 18, 2010 @ 12:06 pm

My favorite voice avatar might be “whispery” which is accompanied by an image of feathers floating in what is probably supposed to be wind, but looks more like smoke. The voice is, as you might guess, a whispery, creepy voice that sounds straight out of a b-movie. But then again there’s “Evil Genius.” It’s so hard to choose!

“Whispery” and “Evil Genius” are just two of Voice Forge’s voice avatars, which allows you or your company to choose a particular voice or voices based on your needs. Each avatar has an image to help you understand what the voice might sound like. You can test out all the voices on the website and make them say whatever you want. For example, I can make the voice “Evil Genius” say “Speech brother Adam B. likes Hannah Montana–he must pay,” or “I have an ingrown hair in my evil genius goatee.”

Voice Forge’s goal is to keep automated voices from sounding “corporate and boring.” You know, just in case your corporate image involves being a “jerkface.” Also, if you were wondering, Jerkface is a pissed off white guy with a hoodie making a blurred angry gesture at you. Who else?

“Wiseguy” is a fellow whose eyes are shadowed by a straw hat (straw hat? I might be behind in my mobsterology, but really?) To me some of the voices sound just like the other TTS voices I’ve heard. But I have to give bonus points to the voice avatar simply labeled dog. It features a dog that might be a beagle of some kind. No matter what you type in the TTS space, you just hear barking.

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