The same word or phrase can be pronounced in a hundred different ways. Even a simple word like "yes" can convey agreement in one instance and doubt in another. It all depends on the intonation and how we say it.
Intonations and speech styles enrich our speech. And today, you can change styles for hundreds of voices on the Kukarella website.
Suppose you want to voice a video with a narrative about your company. In that case, you can choose a voice that supports styles like newscast or documentary narration. To create a voice prompt for your phone system, you can choose voices that support styles ranging from customer service to neutral. If you're voicing a dialogue between friends, voices that support friendly or chatty styles would be suitable.
As you understand, the same voice can sound different. You can make the voice sound predominantly neutral but transition to a formal style at certain moments or even shout (because life can be unpredictable).
How does it work? When you select a voice for text-to-speech, pay attention to the icon with masks. Those are the voices that support styles. If you want to see only voices that support styles, you can choose the "Styles" filter, and you will see all the voices that have styles.
Next, if you hover over the icon with masks, you will see a list of all the styles supported by the voice. Some voices support 1-2 styles, while others support around 20.
Choose a voice that you like.
Now, in your project, click on the voice, and you will see a window that displays all the information about the voice: its name, the platform that created it, the effects supported by the voice, and most importantly, the styles. Here you can click on the styles and choose the style that the voice should primarily use for text-to-speech.
Why do we say "primarily"? Because you can change the voice style for individual paragraphs. For example, you may want the main text to be voiced by a neutral voice, but specific paragraphs to be read in a friendly or formal style.
To change the style for a particular paragraph, click inside the paragraph, open the effects panel (dark icon on the right side of the screen), and select the desired style. Now that paragraph will sound in that style. You can listen to the paragraph and try applying different styles to it one by one. This way, you can achieve the exact effect you desire.
If everything satisfies you, click the Play button in the upper right corner of the screen, and after a few seconds, the entire text will be converted, and you can listen to how it sounds. If you're satisfied, you can save the audio in the format you need.
And most importantly, experiment with styles, choose different voices, and try how they sound. It may be that you're accustomed to a particular voice and use it for voicing your texts, and that's great if it suits you. However, it's always worth remembering that to make a computer voice more realistic, you need to make some adjustments. Change styles, try applying effects, adjust pitch, speed, and emphasis. It is through such iterations that you can make your audio sound the most realistic.
And of course, speech styles are crucial. Try them out. Some voices support a multitude of styles such as Chat, Angry, Cheerful, Friendly, Hopeful, Sad, Excited, Shouting, Terrified, Unfriendly, Whispering. Imagine how much richer your audio will become if you use at least some of them. Try it out. And please, share your successes, findings, and failures with us. Write to nazim@kukarella.com. Our goal is to make computer voiceover as realistic as possible. Let's do it together.