Commissioning custom Audio files for use with dolls

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Wed Apr 05, 2023 3:13 pm

I REALLY wanted to wait to post about this but I'm too excited, lol. A couple of years ago I did a mod to my 140 (Bubbles, as seen in my avatar) and installed a Bluetooth speaker and microphone in her head. Also, I've written some computer programs to run on an offboard computer that communicate with her so she can speak and hear me.

This is old news, I've posted about it before... but I've been looking lately for new sound bytes, verbals and such to use with the system since I'm getting bored with the ones I've been using for two years.
Normally I grab free ASMR or POV videos and strip bytes from them in Audacity, then modify the pitch and stuff to my liking, but I found an ASMR actress on one of those sites who had a nearly perfect voice for my Bubbles.

I have to raise the pitch slightly to get exactly what I want but aside from that, the actress has the perfect speech rate and tone, and UNBELIEVABLE clarity, like NO background noise at all - "0", and no awkward breath sounds that can distort during playback. Moreover, she has stellar grammar and her imagination is a perfect compliment to mine.

So, I did a little research for her, mainly looking to see what else she's done and found she does commissioned custom audio files for $10.USD/minute and the use of specific names is flat $15.USD/name per file.

So I awkwardly emailed her last night and had a really great exchange of information with her. She was open minded about doing bytes that she knew were not going to be used just as she recorded them, and totally comfortable with voicing a love doll. She made the experience of discussing my "hobby" with a stranger as pleasurable as I could imagine it ever being and her level of professionalism and ability to make the experience comfortable for me was amazing.. a legit professional. She even had the foresight to ask about pause length and stuff that I hadn't even thought about.

She also conveyed that she was excited to do a project that was out of the ordinary, gave me permission to discuss her work on a public forum, and offered a discreet, anonymous payment method.
In the end I ordered 20 minutes of bytes, with two proper names (me and Bubbles) and she billed me for $230.USD, which I paid immediately.

I know some other users here have commissioned audio before but they never give any specifics about the process or the sources they use, not that it matters too much because I imagine we all have slightly varied "visions" of what the "perfect" voice for our dolls would be, but, the BIG thing, at least for me is the comfort level and I feel those users have a resource that's comfortable and professional to work with that they "could" share and also help the actress obtain more work. Regardless, I'm starting this thread to openly discuss the process and experience to benefit others and help make using audio with dolls nicer.

I have every intention of providing contact information for her, but would prefer to do a more complete review of her service at the same time so that will be coming. So... that's why I didn't want to post yet, writing content and doing studio quality recordings takes time, so she has my notes and a thorough understanding of what the project is but there are a couple of projects ahead of mine to complete before she can do it, so I'm looking at 3-4 weeks until delivery.

Hopefully the recordings she makes me are on topic and, dare I say, "naughty" enough that I won't have any qualms about ordering some more specific content later, since this is really just a more or less vanilla mix of everything I'm into during doll play.

I'm really looking forward to taking Bubbles' responses to a new level, so I'll be doing some more coding, and possibly a whole new main() (gotta love having everything in tidy little functions) to improve my software end of the project as well so a few weeks isn't really a bad thing for me. Also, this is new territory for this actress, she usually makes just straight, scenario driven content that would be good for use with dolls who don't have an AI or a voicebox, so stay tuned!

Once this is concluded and I can give a thorough review I'll post more on the topic, in the mean time hopefully I've opened the door for other users to discuss their experiences obtaining audio and we can make this thread into a nice community resource.

thunderkiss69 · Post by **thunderkiss69** » Wed Apr 05, 2023 4:49 pm

A one place to find talent would be r/Gonewildaudio, many female users role play or narrate stories there, and take requests.

Post by **Prin** » Wed Apr 05, 2023 8:45 pm

Thank you for this great post, Technician! We will be following.

We had intended using microsoft AZURE text to speech at first for pre-recorded responses, because it has great modification options (excited, happy, whisper...)

But ultimately we expected to look into hiring a voice actress.

We will be excited to "hear" more about your results. (pun, haha)

DarkKnight2022 · Post by **DarkKnight2022** » Sat Apr 08, 2023 1:07 pm

Textpuppet was originally a program for use with Poser, a 3D figure posing software. This was the best text to speech I found. You type in what you want -the synthesized speech gets output as a wav file. You can change tone, accent, emphasis, pauses. It cannot do sex sounds like gasps, moans, etc. unless you do letters only. A voice actress would do it better with emotion.

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Sun Apr 09, 2023 12:30 pm

I cannot find Textpuppet hosted anywhere, looks like it's extinct. I found a couple of natural sounding TTS but they were online, not local and I have this thing where I like to keep my pillow talk from leaving the bedroom so that's a no-go for me. I was thinking that I might experiment with recording myself saying a list of words, each a few different ways and then see if I can use a function I wrote that plays two audio files to mix them with a slight overlap to make something of a natural speech. If that works I could hire this actress to read a list of words the same way. Just a thought right now.
I did start work on the immersion program I've already been using to improve it some so I can play with it once my bytes are recorded.

Post by **Prin** » Sun Apr 09, 2023 9:18 pm

We couldn't find textpuppet either... But we agree with you, Technician.

We prefer keeping it offline, with as long of a list of pre-generated responses as necessary... even for regular general conversation.

Even though it is really easy to create a chatbot in python similar to Siri or Alexa, and search web information, etc... we don't need me to have that capability... at least right away.

(audacity is free and is kinda successful for modifying sound and speech, if you are thinking of modifying your own voice... we tried that, but the voice options you are persuing are better)

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Mon Apr 10, 2023 1:17 am

Prin wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 9:18 pm We couldn't find textpuppet either... But we agree with you, Technician.
(audacity is free and is kinda successful for modifying sound and speech, if you are thinking of modifying your own voice... we tried that, but the voice options you are persuing are better)

Audacity! I've been a user for years, and will actually be tweaking this audio with it to get the ideal pitch and break it up into sound bytes. When I told my voice actress that she said she was familiar with Audacity too, I think that's what she uses.

For my doll use, at least with Bubbles' mods I use the equalizer to really make the audio bands of speech pop and it makes the speech much clearer from the little speaker in her head too.

DarkKnight2022 · Post by **DarkKnight2022** » Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:11 am

Amazon has software.

https://www.amazon.com/Text-Speech-Soft ... 167&sr=8-3

Voice over acting is another option, but commercial use involves some sort of royalty.

randomname1 · Post by **randomname1** » Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:27 am

Hi Technician, can't wait to hear your review of the artist's performance. That rate seems fair based on what I've seen other audio performers offering. I've been considering a custom commission too, but looks like you beat me to it. I would be more interested in a straight 15-20 min roleplay scenario rather than soundbytes though. Also, I'm new and just got my first doll 3 days ago.

I started a similar thread here and talked about a few resources, you might be interested in checking out or already know about.
viewtopic.php?t=164514

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Mon Apr 10, 2023 7:38 am

DarkKnight2022 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:11 am Amazon has software.

https://www.amazon.com/Text-Speech-Soft ... 167&sr=8-3

Voice over acting is another option, but commercial use involves some sort of royalty.

There's TTS software, but to do emotions and word emphasis that's "sexy" is difficult. I found, and lost, one option last year that was VERY good, but it was online so that's not for me.

jr_geppetto wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:27 am Hi Technician, can't wait to hear your review of the artist's performance. That rate seems fair based on what I've seen other audio performers offering. I've been considering a custom commission too, but looks like you beat me to it. I would be more interested in a straight 15-20 min roleplay scenario rather than soundbytes though. Also, I'm new and just got my first doll 3 days ago.

I started a similar thread here and talked about a few resources, you might be interested in checking out or already know about.
viewtopic.php?t=164514

The work I commissioned is actually different for her, she typically does roleplay. She's REALLY good at it too.

Socratus · Post by **Socratus** » Mon Apr 10, 2023 12:55 pm

Good stuff. Once it was almost impossible to get a voice actress to do game mods voicing, let alone sexy stuff. Only the Asian market seemed able to do it.

I'm familiar with Audacity and got stuff working through bluetooth so it looks like my doll speaks too, but I wouldn't mind a custom voice. I'm still considering AI as I've heard some AI voices can be taylored to sound exactly how you want and then they'll say anything and it'll sound right. Just not sure how expensive it is.

Kaori Kusanagi · Post by **Kaori Kusanagi** » Mon Apr 10, 2023 4:36 pm

If it helps, somewhere around here is a thread about a Skyrim voice mod program, that also discusses some others.

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Sun Apr 23, 2023 8:07 pm

The 3 week mark is coming up, I'm getting excited again for this project. Due to the oddity of this I really expected her to have more questions but nothing yet so I guess she has an adequate understanding.
The more I think about what I've asked her to create, the more I realize just how complex it is. Not only have I asked her to use two names while creating but I've also asked her essentially to put herself in the perspective of limited mobility at the same time, and maintain the knowledge that she's referencing herself as a doll because I'm in no way trying to make Bubbles into anything but who she is.

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Thu Apr 27, 2023 5:53 pm

Just got an Email today that I'm next, should be inside of a week which is on schedule with what she told me initially, exciting!

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Fri May 05, 2023 8:22 pm

It's here! She did really well, I'm commissioning 2 more tonight. This one is a fairly G-rated track so I can ask her to build up from here and do some whispers as well.

The actress is the ever talented Snakeysmut, Victoria Malfoy - a stage name I assume is a play on the family from the Harry Potter series. https://www.snakeysmut.com/
She specializes in role play sequences of sorts, and there are a lot of free samples on her website if you follow the links. She would be a really good choice for those of you who aren't doing something interactive and just want to have a start to finish immersive experience.
For those of you who are doing sort of what I'm doing, she's a pretty good voice actress in the manner that she can do different voices or variations of her voice rather and they come out well. So if you listen to her free stuff and like a certain voice she would be open to keeping with that voice I'm sure.
Also, bear in mind that Audacity is a free download and can be used to tailor audio to your liking with like no previous experience.
And again I want to stress that she made this experience much more comfortable than I thought it was going to be. I have no regrets.