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## Get out of my box!

In 2011, a research team led by David Puts at Penn State University conducted an experiment. The researchers drew a square on the floor of  the train station. Next to it was a man whose task was to tell anyone who walked inside the square: ‘Get out of my box.’

As it turned out, when he uttered this phrase in a high voice, almost no one paid attention to him and all the passengers stepped on the square.

However, as soon as he changed his tone and began to utter the same sentence in a low voice, people changed their attitude towards him. They abruptly changed direction and not one of them - not one! - stepped over the line.

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What conclusions can we draw from this experiment?

What we say is important. But how we say it is more important. The most correct words will lose their meaning if they are expressed in a colorless voice or tone that does not fit the situation. For example, try to laugh while you are talking about the company’s profits with shareholders. Most likely they will decide that it is time to sell shares. Or try telling a fairy tale to a child in low, loud bass. It is possible that instead of being carried away by history, he or she will get scared and hide from you.

However, this is what companies often do when they create voice-over for their videos, presentations, or commercials. Sometimes they do not strike  the right tone. And sometimes, unsure how to choose the right voice, they opt instead to “do no harm” and choose something neutral and characterless; as if choosing something mediocre will make their lack of professionalism less noticeable.

![02.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/02_4dc702b10d.png)

There are countless voice options. The wise old man or the gullible baby. High or medium timbre. Friendly or arrogant tonality. Different temperaments: hot-tempered, melancholic or sanguine. Volume and pace.

We all agree that a voice that is perfect for an orange juice commercial is completely unsuitable for serious treatment. But this raises the question: How do you learn to choose the right key for the right situation in order to reach your audience?

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## How to learn to “hear” a voice

When animation school students are taught how a film is made, they are often told to turn off the sound and just look at the picture. If you want to conduct an experiment, start watching animation with sound and then turn off the sound for 3 minutes. Compare your impressions.

If there is a last word about the importance of voice-over artists, it may belong to Neil Ross. His theory is that -- especially concerning cartoons with limited animation --  without the sound track, the cartoon is nothing but a series of drawings. Sounds, such as musical accompaniment, noise, and  speech, make the film multidimensional and allow you to convey the necessary information. But how do you choose these sounds and voices?

Voice-over artist Valerie Smaldone said that she really did not like the voice in the Panera Bread commercial. In this video, the creative concept illustrates “real life experiences” and the movement toward clean food. Watch the video. What impression does it make on you?

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According to Valerie, the voice-over actor on this campaign really got slammed. The voice was incredibly youthful and did not fit the campaign. It also sounded too contrived. She soon learned that similar opinions were represented across social media forums, including Facebook. One post about the commercial ignited a flurry of comments, mostly negative, about the commercial and the voice.

Did you get a sense of  what Valerie was talking about? Try listening to the audio again, but this time without the video. What is your impression now? Has it changed?

Very different feelings arise when watching Ram Truck commercials.

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The voice belongs to actor Sam Elliott. Do you think his voice matches the brand? Is it credible? Now listen without the video. Do your feelings change? It’s possible that the sense of trust grows even greater. Such a voice will not deceive. Sam Elliott’s voice and Ram Truck go together perfectly, like tea and toast.

A voice should not always inspire immediate confidence. Sometimes it just needs to draw attention and hook the listener, and the easiest way to achieve this is if you knock listeners out of whatever rut they are in. This trick is successfully used by marketer Gary Vaynerchuk. You get the same “give it to me straight” brand voice whether you’re stalking him on Twitter, reading one of his best-selling books, or listening to one of his short, but insightful videos on YouTube. This is an example of accurately reaching your audience. Gary knows his audience and speaks their language.

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What's interesting - Now that Gary V no longer needs to prove his status, it’s interesting to note that his voice has increasingly grown calmer, without strong shifts in intonation.


What questions should you ask yourself in order to choose the right voice?

Let's imagine ourselves at the airport, in the departure lounge. You are waiting for your flight, and it seems to be delayed by one hour, because of which you will most likely miss your connecting flight. You are waiting for the announcement. And when you hear it, the announcer states in a cheerful voice that the plane is five hours late. What kind of reaction does this cause for you? At least irritation. Or maybe aggression.

According to one passenger who was interviewed in the focus group, it sounded like she was mocking their inconvenience.

Many airports today use two voice options. Those about delays use a toned-down voice, and then the rest use the more cheerful one.


![03.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/03_ef8101edd1.png)

Want to be heard by your audience and avoid unnecessary costs by remodeling messages? Then you need to regularly ask yourself these questions:

- Who is my audience? You’re going to talk differently to a forty-year-old mother of three than you will to a six-year-old boy

- What information do I want to deliver to them?

- Where will they see or hear my message?

- What reaction do I expect from them?


This list of choices will help you a little bit:

![04.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/04_5bf51f4f0e.png)

Answer these questions, and then you will take the first step toward choosing the right voice.

Some voice-over customers may decide that the question of choosing the key and voice is not their task. They leave it to the sound engineer to figure out which voice to use, or to offer a small sample of voices from which the customers can choose. But does the sound engineer know your audience as you know it? Does he understand what your listeners expect from you? Does he know your brand’s history and market position?

It may well be that the sound engineer’s professional experience will help him nail the right voice. But wouldn’t it better to make that decision sooner and without spending too much time and money?

You can conduct a quick experiment that will take a few days and cost you a cup of coffee. And by doing that you can get a response from your audience, which will save a lot of time and prevent errors.

- Write the text you want to voice over;

- Go to https://www.kukarella.com/text-to-voice-converter, and enter your text into the editor;

- Select any of 500+ voices across 60 languages and accents (on Kukarella you get direct access to all voices from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM);

- Hit the ‘Convert’ button and in a few seconds you’ll get a bunch of audio files;

- Share audio with a few representatives of your target audience (preferably more than 50 people) and ask them to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10;

- Choose the voice that scores highest among your target group

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![05.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/05_0f72050d8d.png)


The voice can be pleasant or disagreeable, harsh or warm, exciting to activity or relaxing, like [the voice John Butler, 84](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-derbyshire-57402080?_blank), who became a YouTube star thanks to his soft voice. One voice can prompt a person to unleash a military conflict; another will calm a crying baby.

A voice cannot be good or bad. It can only be SUITABLE or NOT SUITABLE - this is the main criterion. A beautiful, lush voice, but not appropriate in specific circumstances, will destroy the message. And another voice, perhaps even one that resonates unpleasantly, may be remembered and even bring incredible success to your company. There is no magic to this. It’s just a puzzle. The main thing is to match theme and voice.

It is possible that you already have THAT PERFECT voice in your head. But we would advise to continue the study and get an answer to the next question: Which voice is more suitable for your message - male or female?


How do you learn to “hear” a voice? What questions should you ask yourself in order to choose the right voice?

How to choose the right voice for your message?

Remember the moment from Back to the Future when Marty woke up in a strange house? What woke him up? His mother's voice. How did it affect him? This immediately created a sense of peace and reliability, which within seconds was comically shattered when Marty saw a teenage girl next to him.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pG5C41GcqE4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It was not about age, but about the voice. Even though the girl was a teenager in this scene, her voice possessed all the characteristics that a mother’s, or rather a woman’s, possesses. What are these characteristics?

Due to simple anatomical differences, a woman’s voice is typically about an octave higher than a man’s.


![06.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/06_ec8cb5457c.png)


In addition, the female voice has a more complex range of sound frequencies than male voices do. As a result, and also because women’s voices activate the same auditory region of the brain as music, their voices are perceived to be more emotional. The melodic and soothing nature of a female voice also makes the audience feel more comfortable and makes listeners more inclined to trust them. Female voices are perceived as more soothing and comforting, as helpful rather than hindering.

In contrast, male voices carry a different energy. One of the differences in the male voice is its neutrality. On a subconscious level, the low-pitched male voice touches an area that scientists call the "mental gaze." As a result, men’s voices are associated with neutral information, with facts. Watch a SciFi video on YouTube. More often than not, they are narrated by a calm, low male voice with little or no emotion.


![07.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/07_e7644ede30.png)

Another important difference is the range of voice. In contrast to the high female voice, the male voice is much lower, and traditionally was perceived as more threatening. As one military man known for his low thundering voice said: “When the enemies hear my voice they must visualize their graves with the date of their death.” This is one difference between female and male voices. One voice symbolizes the warmth of the hearth, while the other - the willingness to protect this hearth.


**What are male and female voices associated with?**

Have you noticed the voices that announce stops on subway trains? The next time you are on the subway, listen. In different countries, different voices sound on different lines or directions. And this is not an accident. For example, in Moscow, in the subway, a male voice announces the train stops that go towards the business center, and a female voice announces the stops heading to residential areas.


![08.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/08_dcb5e90e18.png)


Some choices are not so obvious, such as voice assistants or navigators. As you’ve probably noticed, female voices are used much more often than male ones. According to statistics, female text to speech voices are preferred over male synthetic voices by 12.5%.

![09.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/09_21d148222d.png)


Using [a female voice](https://www.debbiegrattan.com/female-voice-over/talent-bio?_blank) as the default voice for voice assistants may irk some who feel it stereotypes women as “mere assistants,” but the truth is that people generally tend to trust [female voices over male voices](https://www.debbiegrattan.com/blog/why-trust-female-voice-over-male-voice?_blank). The higher pitch of a female voice instills more confidence in listeners that they are telling the truth than the lower-pitched male voice.

It’s also been shown that the human brain is developed to like female voices, and perhaps even prefer them over the male voice. Studies suggest this preference can be traced back to the womb, with unborn babies reacting to the sound of their mother’s voice.


**Are there any “male” and “female” topics?**

Does this mean that if you need to record a message to advertise children's products, then you need to use female voice generators; and is it better to use a male voice over for the technical video? Not necessarily.

Today, when female and male roles in society are changing and consumer consciousness is adapting to new circumstances, it is impossible to talk about a clear gender boundary.  In many families, the woman earns the main household income while the man runs the household, takes care of the children, etc. Therefore, today a male voice advertising baby food or diapers is perceived quite organically.

![10.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/10_091e521ce1.png)

However, there are some rules that are worth observing.

In most cases, it is better to use a voice that matches the voice of your target audience. The territory of a purely male voice is the exception rather than the rule. For example, men's pharmaceuticals, spare parts for a car.
When it comes to a mixed audience, female voices are preferable to male voices, although this can vary depending on societal values.
In terms of advertising, male voices are more convincing for male products, while female voices are suitable for almost any product or service. In general, female voices are more universal than male ones.
There is a purely feminine territory, for example, hygiene or decorative cosmetics. It is unusual to hear from a man about how mascara makes your eyes more expressive. The exception, of course, is if this is said by a male stylist; then he will be trusted.

Before you continue reading, pause and think about your audience and what you are going to tell them. Should they be told by a male or female voice?

You can try experimenting with different text to speech voices if you use the Kukarella online voice generator.


Which voice is right for your audience?

The [study by Linek et al. (2010)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226417405_The_speakergender_effect_Does_the_speaker's_gender_matter_when_presenting_auditory_text_in_multimedia_messages?_blank) indicates that learners who listened to the narration by a female speaker outperformed learners who listened to the narration by a male speaker in terms of problem-solving test scores. The female speaker was also rated as socially more favorable than the male speaker.

But is it so simple? Obviously not.

In general, you can choose between a male voice and a female voice according to a simple principle: Theme of your business; potential gender audience; associative connection (of the audience) with your topic. Take car advertising, for example. It is difficult to determine the potential buyer; it may be a man or a woman. So dig deeper.

What do I want first of all to inform my subscribers about? About engine power and the new logic of gear shifting or about its compactness, maneuverability, ease of parking, and wide range of colors and elegant design? Of course, all these characteristics are important, yet you can predict which information will interest a male audience more than a female one.

As Matt Byrom noticed in his article ‘[Male vs. Female Voice-overs: Which One Is Really Better for Your Video?](https://www.business.com/articles/male-vs-female-voiceovers-which-one-is-really-better-for-your-video?_blank)’ *While this may be true to an extent, it can be argued that a female voice-over cannot be more persuasive than a male one when it comes to selling something like beer, or razor blades, or any products that are predominantly aimed at men. Likewise, a male voice-over won't be as effective as a female one when it comes to selling products aimed at women.*

No matter what type of media you create - commercial, tutorial, training video or audiobooks - you can quickly test which voice will sound better in each case. Try different voices and accents with the help of the online Kukarella text to speech converter, then let several customers listen and gauge their reaction. The whole experiment will take a few hours and cost less than ten dollars, but it will save thousands of dollars that you risk losing if you choose the wrong voice.

And what's more, having decided on the type of voice, it will be easier for you to choose the tonality for your message.


Are there any “male” and “female” topics? Which voice is right for your audience?

What are the major differences between male and female voices?

Can you read a person’s mood from the first words of conversation? I think that most of us would answer yes. After millions of years of evolution, the human ear has become so adept at recognizing changes in tone that even the slightest shift can have a dramatic impact on the meaning of a word or phrase.

For example, remember how your mother or father called you in childhood. If your name was pronounced quickly, clearly, in a stern, no-nonsense voice, you immediately knew that you were in serious trouble. Conversely, if your name was stretched out “Bri-yan!” or "Cyn-thi-aa!" in a singsong tone, then you immediately knew that things were fine. Likewise, your clients can determine from tonal clues whether you have come to make an interesting offer or are just talking about your successes, and also whether you are addressing them or some other audience.

As Dominic Tortorice says in his post [4 Brand Tone of Voice Examples](https://www.brafton.com/blog/creation/4-brand-tone-of-voice-examples-to-use-when-building-your-own?_blank):  “Imagine, that you are a cosmetics brand trying to reach millennials on social media. Well, you might use a fun, lighthearted tone that is peppered with emojis and lingo designed to connect with a younger audience. However, say you’re trying to grab the attention of the C-suite audience. Your tactics would likely shift 180 degrees.”

The suits would probably respond best to a tone that is highly professional, is condensed into short, quick-hit sentences and is authoritative. You want to appear knowledgeable. You want to inspire. You want to provide thought leadership and cultivate an executive following that looks to you for solutions and ideas.


![11.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/11_265444e7ac.png)

Whether you are creating  a voice-over for your slides presentation or youtube video, the audience should feel that:

- You are speaking to them individually, and speaking their language;
- You are a real person, not a robot. Added touches — like oohs and ahhs and ahas and yups — are an integral part of human communication and have a massive impact on how you’re perceived;
- The tone of your voice matches your message;
- You can be trusted.


**A friendly or trusting voice?**

We just discussed the importance of knowing your audience and speaking their language. But what if you have to choose between the qualities of a voice like friendliness and trust? What if the voice sounds clear, but does not inspire confidence?

![12.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/12_1bbf892d5f.png)

The Nielsen Norman Group [conducted a study](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/tone-voice-samples/#:~:text=Relative%20Effects%20of%20Trustworthiness%20and%20Friendliness&text=However%2C%20trustworthiness%20is%20a%20much,desirability%2C%20across%20all%20the%20industries.&text=Across%20all%20industries%2C%20however%2C%20the,2.2%20times%20that%20of%20friendliness?_blank) in which it tried to find an answer to the question of trust. As it turns out, friendliness and trustworthiness as independent variables were statistically significant predictors of desirability (willingness to recommend). However, trustworthiness is a much stronger predictor of desirability, across all the industries.

A playful tone for a serious industry has the potential of creating pleasant surprise and helping a company stand out from its competitors. But people don’t expect car insurance to be fun. “The friendliness kind of takes away some of the credibility,” one participant pointed out. Humor is extremely risky, because when it fails, you annoy and alienate your users.

Remember to consider the concerns of your audience and their emotional state when choosing a tone. If your users are nervous patients preparing for surgery, do you really think they’d prefer a formal tone? If your users are arriving frustrated at an error page, do you think they want that error message to be a joke?


**Enthusiastic or calm?**

This is another choice to be made. And there is no need to guess. Several groups of scientists have carried out a series of experiments and obtained the same results.

In ‘[Does speaker’s voice enthusiasm affect social cue, cognitive load, and transfer in multimedia learning?](http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/nbnfi-fe2020101283783.pdf?_blank)’ study, children who listened to a reader who displayed enthusiasm had a higher recall of the contents than did children who listened to a reader who spoke in a neutral voice.

In a similar vein, [Towler and Dipboye (2001)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11825391_Effects_of_trainer_expressiveness_organization_and_trainee_goal_orientation_on_training_outcomes?_blank) showed that a trainer who displayed high enthusiasm and expressiveness produced higher recall test scores among trainees as compared to a trainer who displayed low enthusiasm and expressiveness.

In the context of tutorial videos, an analysis of open online course videos showed that learners were more engaged -- they watched the presentation longer and attempted to answer more post-video assessment problems -- when instructors spoke with higher degrees of enthusiasm ([Guo et al., 2014](http://up.csail.mit.edu/other-pubs/las2014-pguo-engagement.pdf?_blank)).

![13.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/13_1bd4c58c26.png)

Through appealing social cues such as "friendly," "exciting," "energetic" and "warm," an enthusiastic voice  results in higher cognitive engagement among users. On the other hand, when a voice is calm and devoid of expressive cues, learners may be less motivated to invest cognitive effort given the lack of socially appealing cues.

Are there any phrases from political speeches that you remember? It can be guaranteed that these were short phrases that did not appeal to the mind, but to the heart. These phrases are typically pronounced with great emotion. Try to pronounce any of these phrases in a quiet, emotionless voice and you will see that it loses its power.

![14.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/14_ef29f5a5a3.png)


Enthusiastic cues are attention-getting stimuli that consistently gain notice among learners, as the stimuli are  ever-changing in the context of verbal and non­ verbal expressions. In contrast, an unenthusiastic teaching style tends to be unchanging and predictable; hence, learners may "tune-out" and stop paying attention to the presented learning content.


**Four dimensions of tone**

Let's try to understand the four main tone-of-voice dimensions that must be taken into account when creating a message.

Funny vs. serious: Are you trying to be humorous? Or is the subject approached in a serious way?

Formal vs. casual: Is the writing formal? Informal? Casual?

Respectful vs. irreverent: Do you approach the subject in a respectful way? Or do you take an irreverent approach?

Enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact: Are you enthusiastic about the subject?  Or is the writing dry and matter-of-fact?


![15.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/15_ae412cca45.png)

To see how these four dimensions of tone can be varied to create different effects, let’s consider a small piece of copy that almost every content team has to consider at some point — an error message.

At the core of every piece of writing is the message — the information we’re trying to communicate to our user. In this case, our message is, “An error has occurred.” Our tone will be how we communicate that message.

First, let’s try a serious, formal, respectful, and matter-of-fact error message.

“We apologize, but we are experiencing a problem.”

We’re not trying to make users laugh, or using any strong emotion in the message. It’s a fairly traditional, straightforward message.

Now, what if we tweak one of the four dimensions? Let’s make this same message a little more casual.

“We’re sorry, but we’re experiencing a problem on our end.”

The message is still serious, respectful, and matter-of-fact. But the message becomes more casual with a few small changes:

“We are” becomes “we’re.”
“Apologize” becomes “sorry.”
The addition of the expression “on our end.”

![16.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/16_2777339494.png)


Let’s add a little more enthusiasm to the message. In this case, “enthusiasm” means emotion more than excitement, since the subject is a negative one for both the site and the user.

“Oops! We’re sorry, but we’re experiencing a problem on our end.”

Now we’ve taken the error message’s tone to casual and enthusiastic. If we add an attempt at humor and a little irreverence, we’ll have taken the same message to a totally different tone of voice.
“What did you do!? You broke it! Just kidding. We’re experiencing a problem on our end.”

Which of these versions of the same message would work best? That depends on your brand and your users.

**Your personality and your users**

Your brand personality.  If you work in a large traditional financial institution, an enthusiastic and irreverent error message might be out of character for your brand. The formal error message could work, but maybe you’ll opt for a casual message if you’ve decided that a personal, conversational feel would be best for your content.

Your users. Consider the characteristics and preferences of your users, but also their emotions and information needs for each piece of content. If your users are frustrated when they get this error message, or they see it frequently, a humorous tone might be irritating.

Remember that you can always vary your tone to fit the situation.

Keep your personality consistent, but vary the tone to fit the user’s emotional state and the topic. For example, a company’s financial report will need to sound different from that same company’s careers page targeting university students.

![17.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/17_478296d0f9.png)

And always remember, you are not your user. Your predictions about how your users will react to your tone may be off. So?


**Test it!**

Create several different versions of the same message on Kukarella. Let your audience listen and ask them to rate it on a scale of 1-10. If you have more than 50 answers, that's a pretty representative survey. You are much more likely to be able to choose a tone that will appeal to your audience.

And at the same time, you can appreciate the benefits of using computer voices. This solution will not work for you in all cases. But chances are high that the realistic computer voice will appeal to your listeners. And if you add effects to it and choose the right accent, you will greatly increase this chance.

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A friendly or trusting voice? Enthusiastic or calm? What does your voice say about your personality to your users?


How to select the right tonality for your voiceover

Do you think the most important element of choosing a computer text to speech voice is how realistic the voice is? Actually, it’s the accent. The wrong (or right) accent can kill or amplify your message.

Do you know how many accents there are in English? 160! German? 250! In the Netherlands, residents of neighboring towns may find it difficult to understand each other. But they have only 5 dialects.

Sometimes accent differences are subtle. But they can still complicate communication. You have probably found yourself in a situation where it is impossible to understand a person because of his accent, or perhaps you have not been understood because of your accent or pronunciation.

Sometimes this results in a humorous situation, as in this video, where the famous tennis player could not understand the journalist's question.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1BOZBAqz-8c?start=24" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

However, in this guide, we address the issues of correct voice acting, and our goal is to make sure that after hearing your message, your audience correctly understands you.

When you are recording a message for your audience, the accent is very important. If your audience senses a foreign accent, they may very well ignore the message, unless you have selected that accent for a reason. It is very important to choose the type of accent that will be close and authoritative for your listeners.

It is no coincidence that the developers of voice synthesizers are constantly adding new accents to languages. On the Kukarella website, you will find several options for English: American, British, Canadian, Australian, Irish, Indian. And you can also convert your text using voices from other languages to get a sense of how it sounds with that accent.


**What the accent says**

Wherever you live today, you’ve probably received calls informing you that you’ve committed a tax crime and you urgently need to call the indicated number and settle the issue or face a large fine or even imprisonment. Sound familiar? Over the past few years, scammers have called perhaps every inhabitant of the planet over 16.

![18.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/18_a240dc8329.png)

Many people were caught up in the scam and ended up paying large sums of money. What convinced them to that they were really receiving calls from the tax office?

The text of these messages is simple, formal and short. The phrases are similar to texts from a TV show about court hearings, and in principle, they inspire confidence. Of course, the terminology is vague, we don't understand a lot, but in general, the message is perceived as authoritative.

But there is another nuance of these messages. Guess which one? Yes, accent.

Have you paid attention to what accent was used in the audio messages received on your phone? Probably not,  because the accent was “normal.” In other words, typical for the country or region where you live.

For calls to America and Canada, scammers use a middle American accent, in the UK they use a British English accent, and in Australia they use Australian voices only. It doesn’t matter that if you make the call after that initial message you’ll be talking to a person with a strong accent. You know that lots of companies have their call centers in India. What matters is that the first message has exactly the same accent that is used in your territory.

When creating these messages, scammers know that accent is a radar that quickly identifies who's theirs and who's a stranger.


**How people react to accent**

The British often frown when they hear American English. Although, it would be more correct to say they used to frown. As a global financial and cultural center, America exports its blockbuster movies and the songs of American artists fill the radio waves. So it's hard to laugh at an accent when a significant part of your life is permeated by it.

It's another matter when you are within your own cultural circle. Your own community. When you take a subway train or go to a local shop or bar. Remember ‘Inglourious Basterds’ German Accent Scene?

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Voice not only carries information, but it also creates an atmosphere. If your potential audience is not the entire global network of the Internet, and you address a certain group of people and expect to inspire their trust, then the accent familiar to this area will assist you. It will inspire a connection with a person who will feel “at home” in this atmosphere and will consider that the creators of the message thought about them and their needs.

Example, in Vienna, the issue is not only what languages to use (English and Austrian German), but what accent. Angela Schneider has been the voice of the transport announcements since 2012. Schneider was chosen, in part, for her Viennese accent – had it been German as spoken in Germany, “people in Vienna would go crazy”, says Dominik Gries from Wiener Linien, the company running most of Vienna’s public transit network in [an interview with The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/02/synthetic-human-changing-voices-automatic-transport-announcements?_blank).

“We want to give people a sort of sense of being at home in our public transport system – and that’s hearing a voice that sounds like she’s grown up with you, not in Hamburg.”

Unusually for a German-speaking country, Schneider also does the English announcements, to maintain that “feeling that we are in Austria” (while still stressing the need for correct English and being “welcoming hosts”).
The effects of the speaker's dialect on multimedia learning was examined [by researchers](http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/nbnfi-fe2020101283783.pdf?_blank), who found that learners who listened to the multimedia presentation with a standard-accented human voice (American English) had better transfer performances and gave higher social ratings for the speaker than did learners who listened to the multimedia presentation with a Russian accent.


![19.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/19_0bf61b0570.png)

[Ahn (2010)](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ILS-11-2019-0124/full/html?skipTracking=true?_blank) compared four voices ranging from slight to heavy accents and found that they did not differently affect learning outcomes. However, it was noted that the learning outcomes were affected only when the learners had indicated beforehand that they did not like a certain accent. This observation indicates that the perceptions of learners regarding the appeal of social cues can actually affect the learning process.


**Accent and language norms**

Along with the accent, there are also the language norms adopted by a group of people or within a given area. In large metropolitan areas and cultural capitals, speech literacy and generally accepted language norms are still considered the most important criterion.

In bustling London, for example, passengers prefer short, crisp announcements over conventional designs. They understand simple “149” over “route 149” better. The transportation authorities explain that, while it is not their intention to promote poor grammar, their top priority is brevity and clarity.

Emma Hignett, the voice of London buses, was hired after being judged on a range of criteria: tone, clarity, image, appropriateness for the bus operating environment, and the type of information the voice is required to deliver. She admits that she doesn’t think about accent when recording, and more about “putting a smile into it, so it sounds warmer”.

In Vienna, where the pace of life is slower, the London rule does not apply. They once tried to shorten the announcement about the next stop, but passengers complained that they felt that it was not good German, even though it's a bit shorter.

Even countries as close as Sweden and Norway have different priorities. In Sweden, names are pronounced as they are locally, while in Norway they are spoken as a foreigner would probably read them.

**How to choose the right accent for your message**

Try to voice a fragment of your message by choosing different accents on the Kukarella website. Here, in addition to the American version of English, you will find British, Irish, Canadian, Australian, and Indian. But you will also find different versions of other languages.
When you listen to the message in several versions, you will probably want to tweak something. So, for example, writers, when they hear their text, they notice grammatical errors in the text and some oversights that they would otherwise have missed.
You can continue experimenting. Try using voices from other languages. For example, enter text in English, French, or German and try voices from Spain, Russia, or Japan. It's a fun experiment. It can cheer you up, but it can also help you better understand your message and even see hidden meanings.
Consider Trevor Noah, who is a master of the  nuances in different accents:

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Do you wonder how to pick the right accent for your message? Here are three  recommendations to help you get started:

- Define your audience: In which country and in which city do they live? What language do they speak?

- Find out which accent is popular in everyday life, and which one is used for business communication (it can be one accent, or it can be two or more);

- Decide if you want your message to sound official or casual.


Ask yourself these simple questions and it is likely that the answers will give you a new perspective on your audience and help you find common ground more easily.

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In this guide on accent and language norms, you’ll learn how to choose the right accent for your message and how to experiment with a powerful online accent generator

How to use accents when you convert text to speech?

Not long ago, almost a hundred percent of the voice-over market was occupied by real voice actors. Computer Text to speech conversion was used mainly for technical purposes in specific industries, such as Robotech, computers or GPS.

David Ciccarelli, co-founder and CEO of Voices.com said a couple years ago: “While there’s a time and place for synthetic voices to provide navigational prompts or brief instructions, communicating important messages with the intent to inform, educate, and inspire audiences should be left strictly to professional voice actors.”

But a lot has changed in recent years.


**How the voice acting market has changed over the past 20 years**

In 2019, Google presented an audio wherein a very lively, natural voice calls the hairdresser and makes an appointment. In the second audio, the client’s voice reserves a table in a restaurant. Both dialogs sounded completely natural, with pauses and interjections. The administrators of the women's salon and the cafe did not even guess that they were dealing with synthesized voices and artificial intelligence.

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“Human brains may not be able to distinguish a speaker’s voice from its morphed version,” said Nitesh Saxena, lead researcher on the study and the director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Security and Privacy in Emerging Computing and Networking Systems (SPIES) Lab.

The new synthesized voices have become much more realistic and therefore already directly compete with voice actors.

Today many businesses use synthesized voices to convert text to speech. The fear of using computer tts voices is fading into the background, giving way to such advantages as the ability to quickly and inexpensively get high-quality voice over.

Computer voices have become more realistic, and the choice among them is growing. If among the synthesized voices you come across robotic voices, such as the voice used by Steven Hawking, then this is an exception.

You might ask - what is the best app for text to speech? The highest-quality text to speech online software, predictably, turned out to be from giants like Google, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon. The problem is that these platforms aren't designed for end users. Rather, they're meant as a B2B solution. So if you ask ‘how do I use Google text to speech’, we would answer that even if you are a tech-savvy person, that won’t be easy. To start converting text to speech you’ll need to create an account on a platform, update lots of settings, and even to code. No need for that, since you can get backdoor access to the best neural voices from Google, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon on Kukarella website.

If you're interested, enjoy this short excursion into the history of synthetic voices:


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Today you can choose not only the type of voice, but also the accent and intonation, and sometimes the temperament of the narrator. Computer voices are so natural and realistic that we often don't notice them in YouTube or Tik Tok videos or when we hear announcements at airports and train stations.


**Top reasons why computer voices are in demand**

Of course, the main reason computer voices are becoming popular is the ease with which they can be created and adjusted, and their low cost.

A professional actor can charge up to USD $750 to create a voice-over for one sentence; this arrangement also requires time to set up an appointment for the recording.

The [voiceover rate guide](https://rates.gravyforthebrain.com?_blank) offers more information about cost, but below is just one sample that shows how much on average it costs to create a voice-over for a commercial video.

![Screen Shot 2022-02-17 at 21.25.41.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/Screen_Shot_2022_02_17_at_21_25_41_5581af8e72.png)


On the Kukarella website, in a few seconds, you can convert the same phrase to speech in 100 different voices and it will cost pennies.

In addition to the price, the human factor should not be overlooked. If an actor is ill, the respiratory tract, and therefore the voice, suffers first. In general, any illness, even just weakness, invariably affects the voice. So you have to either wait for the actor to restore his voice or look for a replacement.

The computer voice is always fresh and tireless. Programmers, filmmakers, game developers, online educators and advertisers quickly calculated the benefits of new tools and started using synthesized voices.

Of course, if you create voice-over for a complex emotional text or dialogue, it is not yet possible to replace a professional actor. In this case, the actor not only reads the text, he creates a character, an image. So if you have a challenging dramatic task and a sufficient budget, then a professional actor can handle the task better than a computer voice.

“If I gave a computer a news article, it would do a reasonable job of rendering the words in the article,” says [Andrew Breen, senior manager of the TTS research team in Cambridge, UK](https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/advances-in-text-to-speech-technologies-help-computers-find-their-voice?_blank). “But it’s missing something. What is missing is the understanding of what is in the article, whether it’s good news or bad, and what is the focal point. It lacks that intuition.”

However, that is changing. Looking forward, Amazon researchers are working toward teaching computers to understand the meaning of a set of words, and speak those words using the appropriate effect. Now, computers can be taught to say the same sentence with varying kinds of inflection.

In the future, it’s possible they’ll recognize how they should be saying those words based simply on the context of the words, or the words themselves. “We want computers to be sensitive to the environment and to the listener, and adapt accordingly,” says Breen.

![20.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/strapi-uploads-us/production/20_a610087a95.png)


This future is really close. In the meantime, you can manually make the computer voice more realistic. You can control the emotionality of a computer voice by adding effects, sighs, pauses, stretching out some words and emphasizing others. You can select many basic effects that will make voices more realistic and add them to your text in seconds.


**Effects**

Effects not only add realism to your voice, but also help make your message more emotionally charged. Read a comment from the “born salesman” Jordan Belfort, immortalized by Leo Dicaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street:

“How many times in your life have you lowered your voice to just above a whisper to tell someone a secret? Again, we’ve all done this a thousand times, because we intuitively know that a whisper intrigues people and draws them in—compelling them to listen more closely. The key here is modulation. You want to lower your voice, and then raise your voice; you want to speed up, and then slow down; you want to make a declarative statement, and then turn it into a question; you want to group certain words together, and then say others in staccato-like beats.. It’s like you’re saying, “Listen, pal, this particular point is really important, and it’s something I really, really believe in, so you need to pay very close attention to it.”

Just as you control your voice, you can control synthesized voices.

In some cases, this requires the use of SSML markup, code that makes the program know where you want to go faster, and where to add a pause or pitching.

In other cases, you just need to click the button with the selected effect and it will be applied to the text. On the Kukarella website, in addition to whispering, you will find a lot of other effects, such as pitching, breathing, the softness of voice, stress.

As Jordan Belfort advises:  Remember never to stay in any one tonality for too long, or else the prospect will become bored — or in scientific terms, habituate — and ultimately tune out.


**How do I apply the effects?**

By changing the rate of speech, you control the attention of the interlocutor or audience: excessive regularity can make speech boring, and they will stop listening to you; too fast a tempo also distorts perception, and the listener does not have time to process the information. Therefore, it is necessary to choose an average and at the same time comfortable speech rate for you, changing it depending on what is spoken.

Emphasis allows you to make semantic accents and draw the audience's attention to certain phrases.

The breathing effect can create realism. We are all humans and we are used to hearing people breathe when they talk - it’s just part of our natural conversation. If it's not there, we miss it. There are exceptions to this rule. In commercial advertising, breath must be removed, because the advertiser does not want to lose the listener’s attention. For more details, read the article ‘[Debreath Your Voiceovers the Human Way](https://www.gravyforthebrain.com/commercial-voiceover-when-should-you-debreath?_blank)’

Rhythm refers to the tempo and duration of spoken phrases. It helps to make meaningful pauses, as well as to break sentences correctly. For example, by starting a paragraph, you can gradually move to the most important sentences. Read the following sentences aloud and feel the rhythm change:

Two / twenty - two / two hundred - twenty - two / two thousand - two hundred - twenty - two / twenty - two - thousand - two hundred - twenty - two


Pauses are not directly related to intonation, but with their help, we also influence the audience. Temporary silence is necessary both for the listener to process the information received and for the speaker himself, who during the pauses can concentrate and rest.


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Give your audience time to digest. A long-time voice actor shared this piece of advice  he received at the beginning of his career. “I'd be doing a joke, and I wouldn't be getting a laugh, and they'd say, ‘Hey, kid. You're not timing it right. You're not giving the audience a chance to digest what you just said. You ought to say the first part of that line and then actually count to two, then say the rest of the line, and I bet you get a laugh.’  So I would take the two-count, and I would read the line, and I would get the laugh."

The effects are what makes voice acting realistic. Experiments show that we can distinguish an artificial voice if it speaks for more than one minute. The reason is that the voice behaves the same. One speed, timbre, tonality. An actor will not behave like that. He will change intonation, speed, pitch, and he will have pauses of different lengths. Remember how different actors said the phrase ‘To be or not to be’ For now a computer voice cannot add so many nuances yet. But just give it a time.

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Therefore, if you want the synthesized speech to sound believable, you will have to learn how to work with effects and experiment a lot.

It's hard to say who will be the first to create a truly realistic synthesized voice. But we can be sure of one thing: in another few years we will not be able to determine who is talking to us on the phone - a real person or a computer. And the realism of the voices will be primarily achieved through the organic use of voice effects.

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How has the voice acting market changed over the past 20 years? How to apply effects to make computer voices more realistic?


Computer text to speech voices vs voice over actors

How do you learn to “hear” a voice? Are there any “male” and “female” topics? Which voice is right for your message? Learn how to choose the right narrator voice to convey information to different audiences.

Behind the Voices