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Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

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21–30 of 99 posts

Re: Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

#21
post #5

Sounds amazing! Just to add a usecase - for many people, creating a decent voiceover is one of the big sticking points for producing youtube videos or educational courses. If I could write a script, and have software generate a decent enough voiceover, it would be amazing. It's not even necessary to copy anyone's voice, as long as there's a selection of the most comprehensible and human-sounding ones. Then, you could…

I made a joke video for work, featuring clips of Sir David Attenborough narrating a fake nature documentary I cut together from video I took at work.

It would have been an order of magnitude better if I could just generate arbitrary phrases in his voice.

(Or maybe not; maybe the constraint made the video better.)

Re: Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

#24
This is probably going to be great, but I just tested out voice generation with the bare minimum of 30 recordings, and it really fell flat. When I tried playback with an input, all it could produce was a high-pitched buzzing sound and then maybe 1/4 of the words I typed in, which sounded nothing like me.

Perhaps you should increase the minimum from 30 recordings to 100?

Re: Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

#26
This is incredible - recorded my voice and I'm blown away with the results.

One thing: I found that I was in such a hurry to record that I probably spoke faster than normal. It'd be nice if there was a way to tune a few parameters manually (tempo, pitch, etc).

If I ever lose my voice and have to have a TTS appliance speak for me, I'll be contacting you all to get my voice profile!

EDIT: For those interested, pretty impressive that it figured out the appropriate cadence for this: https://lyrebird.ai/g/v7MpYaUA

Re: Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

#27
post #24

This is probably going to be great, but I just tested out voice generation with the bare minimum of 30 recordings, and it really fell flat. When I tried playback with an input, all it could produce was a high-pitched buzzing sound and then maybe 1/4 of the words I typed in, which sounded nothing like me. Perhaps you should increase the minimum from 30 recordings to 100?

Hi! Thanks for testing it! For many voices it works well with only 30 recordings. For some, you need a bit more. It seems that quality of the audio (no background noise, clear and loud voice, lots of intonation) is what matters the most.

Re: Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

#28

This is incredible - recorded my voice and I'm blown away with the results. One thing: I found that I was in such a hurry to record that I probably spoke faster than normal. It'd be nice if there was a way to tune a few parameters manually (tempo, pitch, etc). If I ever lose my voice and have to have a TTS appliance speak for me, I'll be contacting you all to get my voice profile! EDIT: For those interested, pretty i…

Thank you for the feedback!

> It'd be nice if there was a way to tune a few parameters manually (tempo, pitch, etc).

Yes we are currently exploring ways to control the generation: volume, pitch, tempo, speed but also intonation and emotion.

Re: Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

#29

Will this technology be licensed for redistribution or only for online API use? I ask because in the video game scenario it would be great to have this in a library I could distribute instead of relying on the API to be available at all times.

The first version will only be an online API. I agree with you that we should eventually think about licensing it for offline/embedded redistribution.

Re: Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice

#30
post #10

"I'm using my voice as my password". Vanguard allows voice authentication ( https://investor.vanguard.com/account-conveniences/voice-ver... ) - and who knows who else will roll something similar out in the future. Yeah, its really really dumb, but it's happening in production now. I wouldn't use this product if I were you, but honestly you should also not use voice verification/authentication for anything.

Fidelity began verifying voice for telephone customer service a short while back. They recorded me during the call then at the end said they were going to use it to verify for future calls. No way to opt out.
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