Voice - positives/negatives

Another issue I have with voice is my accent. I mean, there is this person I talk to daily who frequently tells me to say "whale" and "veil".. and then laughs. *sad face*

Oh yes... I am so bothered by my accent that I forget what to say. It is mostly stuttering, and then I get even more annoyed. Even when ppl tell me I sound fine, I think I sound like Minnie Mouse.

*another sad Norse face*

So yes, I've tried voice, but it was really hard to hear much. I am not sure if it's my bad internet connection or my wireless system that breaks it up so much. It was a lot of typing "Can you hear me?" "Can you hear me now?" "I heard you but not clear" "Let us try IM" "No go back to lokal chat".... "Can you hear me???" For me it is no benefits, so I have it turned off.

Positive - rarely uses it
Negative - hearing certain sound(s) when someone is using the bathroom

THIS!

Plus if you have more than two people involved, with the delay, it's too easy to miss stuff.

When we have voice conferences at work someone basically has to open up a shared document and write down everything everyone says, just to keep track. I think it would be more efficient if we were all typing what we said, since we have to wait for the update anyway, and just share a log.

Not to veer off topic too much, just wanted to say I know a guy friend in SL who was using one of those for a robot AV voice. We got to talking about it and he put it on a female setting.. yes, you're very correct. Any hint of being able to tell it's software is now gone with the new generation of them. Utterly amazing.


Positive: More natural, true-to-RL communication.
Negative: RL slap in the face, including all the background and bodily noises.

LOLz... I have a friend with a particularly funny British accent... Another friend who's Canadian and says "about" really funny... and I been told I talk through my nose like a typical Ohio native

Food for thought!!!!

This has been my experience.

However, I recently attended a guided meditation group which was led on voice (only the leader was on voice), and it was really very effective. So it has its uses.

Awwww... that is really rude. Maybe you don't need this kind of "friend".

Well, you are braver than I am! I haven't even tried to use voice in a second language, I'm too embarrassed by my mistakes.

It would be so cool to have a voice changer, and have a voice that match the avatar. I heard that thing about "RL ruining the fantasy" before. The few I've spoken to in SL has had great voices, so it's not an issue for me yet. *melts*

A deep, sexy, sultry voice.... mmmm. I think I would find it more easy to talk then too. Now this really gets paranoid. A RL female who use a voice changer just to sound better. Pfft. I guess I forget it. But a robot voice and a robot avatar... /really/ tempting.

Is there a voice changer that will make a human sound like a ferret?

I can't work on the computer and talk at all, in any application. If I'm trying to show someone how to do something, my hands move, I click the mouse and type...but my voice, which started off explaining the steps I was taking, sort of trails off...

Plus, I hate the fact that SL voice isn't full duplex...that is, you can't hear yourself as you speak, like you can with a telephone. This feels terribly disorienting to me, as if I'm talking to myself...because I hear my voice out HERE, in the room, and not in THERE, in the virtual space I'm talking to.

That's not SL's fault, exactly...it's simply the way nearly all digital headsets work. But I hate it.

GIRL is also a popular acronym (Guys In Real Life), but can be rather ambiguous.This...This...
...and ESPECIALLY this!

Oooo, try to get it to sound like the Star Trek computer voice.

Or maybe Rosie for the Jetsons, but her voice is not as universally recognized.

Hmmm, where is that thread about the guy who got his bits stuck in the chair slats ...

I thought it turned out he was a marsupial, not a mustelid.

I don't use voice. I am not - NOT - a man.
Here's some reasons why I don't do it.
The first point to get across is not to assume because a woman does not use voice that she is a man "in drag".

1. I am paranoid about anyone using recording equipment around me unless it is for a stated and visible purpose (and in which I can garner some profit). It simply isn't in my sphere of allowable options. Voice in sl simply has no guarantee of privacy.
2. It is likely my voice would be recognized by some people. I can't afford to take such a risk especially in intimate settings.
3. Voicing or even "sexting" is slutty.
4. I live alone. Ever hear a voice on the phone in a large empty place with very few neighbours? Very creepy and horror-filmish. I dont like to feel someone's standing at my shoulders and whispering in my ear. Too many shades of that film about the girl living on her own with phone calls always happening. I have very large glass windows and sliding doors onto a deck on a lake where I am in the winter and I don't have curtains (drapes) just the darkness, moon, stars and snow shine. It IS a bit off-putting to realize someone can see in for much of my place but I dont mind unless an enthereal voice swans itself through my house. Then I am creeped out.
5. I have music permanently ON in my house. Even when I sleep in my room, the internet radio or cds are playing in the living room. It's like some people can't sleep with the door open - I need songs or classical. Voice interferes with that.
6. Web cam follows voice. I don't "cam" - you are NOT going to see me doing intimate things or even chatting. I am on webcams and satellite for meetings etc. That's more than enough. Even then I feel I need more makeup.
7. I am literate to a high degree - I communicate with words. I like to "read" what I am saying. I never send an email without consideration of its effect. Voice does not allow corrections.
8. Some accents are hard ones to digest - I can't understand them.
9. Because of what I do, I am quite deaf. I also have Temporal Mandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ) AND I have extreme Tinnitus because of what I do. Headphones increase my tinnitus. It's bad enough as it is without adding to the problem. And I am not going to have you broadcast over my Bose speakers your gravelly Barry White groans. I would laugh.

Damn, you owe me a new keyboard!

Busy doing what?




PPP ( Sorry to lower the tone of was a serious thread )

Check out what I just wrote above - I love phones (mobile etc) but hate voice. I think most women would agree.
And what is this thing men have about proving a woman is a woman? Men have real hangups over that - there is absolutely NO way we can prove we are women to you. Actually, I would be suspicous IF I was a man and a woman was falling all over me with voice or cam - it may be a case of entrapment blossoming.

Creepy things voice reminds me of:
1. Being stalked.
2. Showering but forgetting to lock the doors.
3. Gate or house perimeter alarms going off at 3 am. Usually a bear has set them off.

I don't know how I ever went without voice myself. It is great being able to build and give or take instructions without having to type. And for meetings it is almost impossible not to use voice.

The main reason I like voice though is that my real life best friends come in SL... so even though we all live in different states ...we can talk for a bit every day. We talk about our families, the up's and downs in our lives, we give support when family members become ill..or take joy when something wonderful happens to one of us. It used to be so expensive to do this on the phone..so being able to talk in SL is a blessing.

One of our friends had her first baby a few months ago and she was able to come in and show us pictures of the baby right from the hospital. She does not come in SL for any other reason than to fill us in on what is going on in RL and to catch up with all the news in ours.

But I totally understand when other's do not want to use voice...and I will ask first if a person minds if I use voice (if I feel a need, such as giving an instruction)...they can still just type their response. If they tell me their voice is not on... then I just type

Seems reasonable but why not just pick up the mobile or landline? Or use Facebook? My mobile is always on and usually burps every few minutes.

Positives?

Ummm...

Not one damned thing, that I can think of.


Negatives?

* Impossible to do Voice when you don't live alone, or in a basement, or in a sound studio. How can you have a live microphone in a room with a blaring TV set, dog barking, music playing, others talking/shouting, or all the other noises that occur in a busy and occupied home? With text, it does not matter what my background noises are.

* Extremely rude to the others present in the room with you in RL, who are forced to listen to your half of the conversation, and possibly to the other half. Like having a rude cell phone user yammering away at full volume right next to you in the movie theatre, or in a restaurant. And do I really want my spouse or my 13 year old daughter listening to even just my side of typical conversations in SL? Hell no! With text, no one participates in the conversation in RL unless they are obviously standing behind or beside me, and reading over my shoulder. In which case they CHOOSE to be involved.

* Impossible to make my voice match my many alts and appearances. I am not Mel Blanc. I can not switch at will between 80+ different voices, and neither can any voice changer software that I have ever seen. Show me a voice changer that can do a human woman, an anthro fox, a lady dragon, a scottish male, a genderless puppy dog, a male wolf, a teenaged girl Fox, or 50 or so other different species, in a variety of ages, and can switch instantly between them, on the fly. You can't. It does not exist. And if it did, see points 1 and 2 above. I don't live in a basement or a recording studio. I have a family.

* Impossible to silmutaneously do Voice for two or more avatars, without it being painfully obvious that the same person plays both avatars. In fact, I am pretty sure it can't be done at all, short of using two computers and two headsets at once. But with text, I can type for both at once, have them interrupt each other, have them seem to have different speech patterns, genders and accents...

* Voice provides no transcripts, no way to go back and catch up on what you missed when your kid screamed something at you from the back bathroom, and you had to go get her a roll of TP. Text? No problem.

* Personally, I find it very difficult to hear and understand most people when they use Voice.

* Finally, I do not WANT to hear the pretty girl I am talking to speak with a man's voice, nor the burly truck driver squeaking with a teenaged boy's falsetto, nor any other voice that does not match my conceptions of how the Avatar ought to sound, based on their typed conversations. If the girl is really a guy, but carries it off convincingly in text chat, why the heck should I care? I have absolutely zero interest in meeting any avatar's Player in RL and having a passionate affair with them. Nor do I want to see, in my minds eye, some RL person whose voice in no way matches their avatar, when I am interacting with their avatar.