This handbook guides you through designing, building, and deploying a “wiseguy” text-to-speech (TTS) voice — a characterful, confident, slightly sardonic, urban-vernacular, mid‑aged-male persona often heard in films and comedy. It covers voice design, dataset creation, recording direction, annotation, model training choices, fine-tuning for persona and prosody, safety and legal checks, evaluation, deployment, and iteration. Use the sections that match your goals and constraints (research, production, indie dev, or creative project).
Christopher Laird Simmons has been a working journalist since his first magazine sale in 1984. He has since written for wide variety of print and online publications covering lifestyle, tech and entertainment. He is an award-winning author, designer, photographer, and musician. He is a member of ASCAP and PRSA. He is the founder and CEO of Neotrope®, based in Temecula, CA, USA.
This handbook guides you through designing, building, and deploying a “wiseguy” text-to-speech (TTS) voice — a characterful, confident, slightly sardonic, urban-vernacular, mid‑aged-male persona often heard in films and comedy. It covers voice design, dataset creation, recording direction, annotation, model training choices, fine-tuning for persona and prosody, safety and legal checks, evaluation, deployment, and iteration. Use the sections that match your goals and constraints (research, production, indie dev, or creative project).
