
Lyebird: Clone Your Voice - fctorial
https://www.descript.com/overdub?lyrebird=true
======
diegorbaquero
Get started takes you to download, download gives you and installer, app
requires sign up, after sign up you go to Overdub and, oh, it's a paid
feature.

Remove installer, delete app.

~~~
Ruhrbaron
I found it pretty disturbing that an installer was immediately downloaded on
clicking the 'Get Started' button. Won't use.

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echelon
Show HN:

I made [https://vo.codes](https://vo.codes) as a side project to democratize
text to speech. It's got lots of celebrities, politicians, cartoon characters,
and tech figures (Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, et al)

Kids on YouTube found it and are making incredible music videos with it.

Homer Simpson and SpongeBob cover Money Machine:
[https://youtu.be/iBpqJF5LXX4](https://youtu.be/iBpqJF5LXX4)

SpongeBob covers WAP (NSFW!) :
[https://youtu.be/dSgd4PoQofQ](https://youtu.be/dSgd4PoQofQ)

SpongeBob covers 6IX9INE :
[https://youtu.be/IKs5iWVRE94](https://youtu.be/IKs5iWVRE94)

I'm planning to do the same thing as these folks after I finish my real time
voice conversion system. It's a killer app for Discord and TeamSpeak - you can
talk in real time as Gilbert Gottfried, SpongeBob, or Donald Trump.

~~~
ValentineC
Neat stuff!

What would it take to get Morgan Freeman's voice onto it?

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echelon
Thanks!

I made one attempt at Morgan Freeman but I didn't have enough sample data. He
narrated a few audio books, but they've either got background music that ruins
the training or he collaborated with other speakers.

What data I gathered I obtained from interviews on YouTube. Unfortunately
they're all so short that it's a lot of work to extract meaningful training
data.

I really want his voice. I'll definitely get back to it.

~~~
ValentineC
If you need training data and don't mind it being from grey-area sources, I
can help with supplying the audio tracks from some of his narration or acting
work. Email's in my profile.

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andygcook
I signed up for Descript and did the Overdub training a few weeks ago. It's
impressive, albeit not a perfect match for my actual voice. You train the
voice by reading 30 minutes of Wizard of Oz using a high quality microphone. I
used a Yeti in a closet at my house. I do plan to record the additional hour
of supplemental reading which might help make it more authentic.

(Side note - I didn't know Dorothy's shoes were actual silver in the book)

My use case for Overdub is to quickly correct errors in recorded demo/how-to
screencast videos for my startup without having to do redo the audio.

Here's a sample of the Overdub output vs. my actual recorded voice if you're
curious:
[https://web.descript.com/084a416c-57d4-4df8-980b-24e0df82532...](https://web.descript.com/084a416c-57d4-4df8-980b-24e0df82532f/b1d3d)

~~~
jeremyw
Thanks for the sample. There's a flatness to the audio in recreation, but the
major difference is lack of inflection. I imagine the latter might be tunable
in a future incarnation.

~~~
andygcook
You can record your voice in different styles, which I think would help with
inflection. I haven't had enough time to really experiment with it yet. The
starting point is definitely an impressive effort on the Overdub/Descript
team's side.

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prophesi
Before Lyrebird was bought by Descript, this was a simple API endpoint. You
could generate short MP3's of your digital voice reading any text of your
choosing, for free.

I used it extensively in one of my projects, only to find everything broken
after leaving it alone for a few months.

All of that to say, are there any alternatives out there HN knows of?

This isn't an attack on Descript, either. The Lyrebird purchase made a lot of
sense, and they've built an amazing product with the technology.

~~~
happycry
Hey, founder of Resemble ([https://resemble.ai](https://resemble.ai)) here.
We're building a custom voice cloning service with APIs and controllability.
Shoot me a message if you want to build a voice from raw MP3s.

~~~
derekja
That's great! I'm glad to see any competition in the space. When I first tried
Lyrebird a year or 18 months ago the quality wasn't great. It was OK and I
could hear a resemblance to the voice it was meant to create, but there were
hisses and fuzzy sections and it just wasn't long term listenable. Recently
the examples I've heard from Descript have sounded really crisp. Keep on the
path you're on! I like your business model better, but from the examples on
your website the voices are still not quite as refined. Now what I'd really
like is a local means of generating great TTS of my own voice, but that's a
different offering.

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failrate
OP: "lyrebird" is misspelled in the title.

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netsec_burn
The live demo is incredible. I've never heard TTS sound so realistic, when did
it get this good?

~~~
cblconfederate
Actually TTS voices have been great since years ago (e.g.
[https://www.nuance.com/omni-channel-customer-
engagement/voic...](https://www.nuance.com/omni-channel-customer-
engagement/voice-and-ivr/text-to-speech.html#!)) , these new neural things
make them a lot more expressive though.

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minxomat
Download page throws this error, might want to look into that. I guess it
benefits the user that it's broken.

> Upscope.io: You have exceeded your Upscope subscription usage limits. We
> will collect data again once usage falls back within your subscription's
> limits.

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cblconfederate
I wonder who will make somethingn like this a downloadable, locally executable
program.

~~~
yonixw
Since you probably need an high end Nvidia GPU at scale - Self hosted is more
likely

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kundan2510
We just launched a bunch of built-in stock voices as well: this is how they
sound:
[https://twitter.com/andrewmason/status/1303384858249494529?s...](https://twitter.com/andrewmason/status/1303384858249494529?s=20)

All these voices have been created via our voice cloning pipeline. Something
to note: the generated audio is 44.1kHz and super crisp, ready to be useful
for voice-overs or editorial corrections. Let me know if you have any
questions about the tech. (I am one of the lyrebird founders.)

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obiefernandez
I would love to use this to "record" voiceovers for my weekly radio show.
Would fix one of the least enjoyable parts of the process, which is actually
recording the voiceovers.

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shannifin
I have not yet had any serious use cases with this tech, but I've enjoyed
playing around with it and I love its possibilities.

(A while back, as an experiment, I recorded samples with a variety of silly
character voices and fake accents; when the end result merged them into one,
it sounded hilarious.)

~~~
russfink
Robocalling, with some interactivity. "Hello! This is Camp Ayne running for
city council. How are your kids Doris and Eugene?"

~~~
inetknght
That's going to be completely indistinguishable from phishing. How would you
protect yourself from that?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Lenny will tie them up.

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blastro
Shoutout to Andrew Mason - I'm glad to see Detour/Descript continue on in some
way. The guys that were building this back in the day were pretty sharp.
Shoutout Ulf, Steve, DJW, Levi

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obiefernandez
Is Andrew Mason (Groupon CEO) involved in Descript? I see a note from him in
the initial composition after installing.

~~~
andygcook
Yes, Andrew Mason is the CEO. He's full time on Descript now and isn't working
on Detour anymore.

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Tepix
So, does this upload your private personal voice audio data into their cloud?
Has anyone read their privacy notice?

