Is Acapela's Maria my familiar "professionelle spanisch Sprecherin" (professional Spanish speaker - female)?
In a thread concerning the pronunciation of jamón, Lazarus pointed the questioner to a site from the Acapela group, Acapela Text-to-Speech Demo, and suggested that we listen to Antonio.
I listened to Antonio, but then wanted to hear the same default text synthesized using Maria's voice. As I explained In that thread, I was looking for the "z" at the end of eficaz!
Imagine my surprise when I seemed to recognize this voice!! Yes! Maria may be the "professionelle spanische Sprecherin" (which is German for professional Spanish speaker) of my French produced (Assimil) text book with CD, which is all in Spanish: "Español perfeccionamiento para alemanes".
Right away I typed in a snippet from the woman who reads to me in the Assimil text to compare her rendition to what the system would synthesize with Maria's voice.
Now I am sure not all Spanish-speaking women sound alike - even when we don't understand them at all yet! So I would be interested to hear what you all hear when you type this sentence into that demo site.
Uh oh...I just realized that I have now come across a stumbling block:-( How can I share my ten seconds of audio?
I remember being able to upload a bit of audio in the older deployment of the "Forum". My question will not be able to be answered if I cannot find a way to upload the sentence that I'm asking you to cut and paste into Acapela's site.
Can someone point me to how to share my audio? ... and otherwise delete my question? In fact, I will begin this post in the "Website questions and feedback site" for good measure.
Here, incidentally, is the sample sentence I will hope to be able to ask you to compare:
"El juez guardó silencio mientra se agitaba en su sillón y volvía rascarse el bigote."
Returning to edit this question and provide a link to a 15 second video clip with the sound I have written about above. But before I attache the link to the sound here, may I first thank Quentin for explaining how to do it to me. Te doy las Gracias, Quentin. And to both Quentin and Lazarus for pointing out errors in the dictation I took from the audio: (Uh oh...I will go with Os* doy las gracias.
Here the link: Es Maria?
Note: I am not at all sure of this Os. May I be excused and allowed to check it tomorrow? ..well, later today?
3 Answers
YouTube video (Don't try it. I broke the link after the author listened to it)
Alas, you can no longer attach files to the Answers. Now you can only place links (to URL's or images) inside the Answers or Questions.
So, you need to create an audio file and upload it online. You can let anyone interested in hearing it download the file or you can use a site with a player and anyone could listen to it there. All you need to do is provide us a link to the site with the file or a player.
I tried it to see if it would work. I made an audio file with Windows Sound Recorder. I imported it and a picture into Window Movie Maker. That movie I uploaded to YouTube. The link to the video on YouTube is posted above. If it works that is one way to do it. Of course, you could do it with just the audio file by itself, but I never do anything the simple way. Let me know if the link works.
Oh, I suppose we could all meet you in the audio chat room. Coffee and donuts on you?
Here the link to my clip and the voice that is not synthesized: EsMaria I edited the link and thanks into the original question, too.
By the way, I tried with my incorrectly written agitaba (agitava) and the synthesizer did not know the difference Too bad I had to write it down here and get caught.
El juez guardó silencio mientra se agitaba en su sillón y volvía rascarse el bigote
It sounds clear, but weird.