Female Voice Wav Files

[Rosita Westhouse]

Iam trying to play an audio file of a female, speaking something in hindi using pygame library in python. When i manually click on audio file and listen to it, it is a female voice, but when but I play it via below script, I get a male voice. I guess it is converting female frequency into male. Why is that and how to avoid it?

pygame.mixer.init() takes a frequency parameter. And since the player defaults to 22050, the playback will be in slowm-otion - making it sound different. You can circumvent this by changing the speed manually, or you can probably get the actual speed from music.load(), the meta-data should be in the file.

A second option to change frequency on the player instead, is to call pygame.mixer.quit() after each media file and re-initiate it with a new frequency matching your new file. Or lastly, read the docs and see if it's possible to change frequency playback on a already initialized instance of the mixer. This is beyond my knowledge tho. I just know what your original root problem is :)

Hi, guys! I'm fairly new at modding (Skyrim, at least) but I wanted to put my more useful skill, audio production, to good use. As I was playing recently, I wanted a female lead but was kinda put off by how masculine the female voices sound. Well, I wanted to go back and replace all the players audio with ones that I plan on recording with a few friends but I'm having a hard time finding where the players audio is in the creation kit. I assume it'd be in one central area but I won't get my hopes up.

The original voice files are located in Skyrims Data directory, within the file "Skyrim - Voices.bsa". As BSA files are a Bethesda file type you'll need an application such as Fallout Mod Manager which can associate itself with and open .BSA files. You'll probably want to extract all of the voice files from the .BSA to somewhere else on your computer, then simply look through the sound files and replace whichever ones you want.

If I recall correctly the folder structures and sound files have been named quite descriptively so you should be able to find what you want relatively quickly. However some Skyrim audio files use Bethesda specific audio formats - fuz and xwm (or something like that) - one type is for music, the other for speech. Some sound effects are wavs but they're reserved for effect sounds. If you find a voice sample that's in a Bethesda format you can download a Skyrim Audio Converter application which can do the encoding for you.

Lastly, if unaware you can test the audio by placing your modified (or original) sound file into the exact same folder location as if it had been extracted from the .BSA and it should replace and play your audio instead of the .BSA version. To explain a little further, if the files from Skyrim - Voices.bsa were in Skyrim in what's called "loose" format (not within a BSA archive) then the folder structure would be...

Well, as long as it is not difficult to implement into the base game, I think we should finally resolve this particular collection of missing assets. In recent years, I've come across several FM makers clamouring for being able to make an FM with a female thief protagonist for a change.

If we find someone willing to do the female player vocal set, I think it should be someone who can affect a voice that sounds neither too youthful or too old. That's, IMHO, key. The player character's male vocal set already sounds like it could belong to any deeper-voiced guy between 20 and 50. I have started this new thread in order to finally organise an effort to create a female vocal set. That's one of the few stumbling blocks left for more original protag creation, IMHO.

Some three, maybe even four years ago, Lavender took a brave stab at this - if memory serves me right, she actually finished her recordings for the entire PC vocal set, they just weren't processed and suitable yet for publication. However, as Lavender has left the forums, we're basically back to square one.

I think we should look into contacting the female voice actors we already have here on the forums and doing an assessment of their voice acting samples. There's got to be at least two ladies with an appropriate voice range for the female vocal set. I think women voice actors in their 30s, with a wide enough voice range, would definitely suffice for what is needed in that vocal set. Bear in mind that the entire vocal set is actually non-verbal, so there is no need to articulate anything. The whole set consists of a voice doing sighs, or noises during physical exertion (e.g. climbing, lifting), and so on and so forth. Though there are dozens of these purely vocal "lines", it's not that long a list, so the vocal set can be completed in a fairly short amount of time. The selected voice actor could do the whole thing in a day or two (or several days), we could then filter through the various takes, select the best ones, have our sound guys help with cleaning up any audio issues, and we could then work on implementing the whole thing as an alternate vocal set. It would be a really nice (if relatively minor) addition for 2.08. Particularly for mission builders.

I think a good early step would be if someone uploaded a zipped version of the pk4 that contains the player's vocal set. To dropbox or a similar reliable cloud service, it's only about 3,5 MB in size. We could then share the link with interested voice actors (if they don't already have TDM on their computer). They could download the zip version, unzip it and listen to the audio files, to get a bit of an idea what the male equivalent sounds like, in addition to the instructions for the VS, as linked to at the end of my previous post.

I've taken a look at whether BrokenArts or RedLeaf (both over at TTLG.com) would be available to help. I'm a bit apprehensive, though. Both are great, but they've already done plenty of work for us in the past, and I think they'd both deserve a rest from VA contributions to TDM. Either of them could still try if they'd be interested, though. From the latest posting history I've seen, BrokenArts probably has other duties at the moment and probably wouldn't be available anyway. (We could try and contact her, but who knows if she has time.) RedLeaf seems to be more available, her currently last visits to TTLG were just the previous month, so maybe she could find some time in the near future, if she'd be interested.

Concerning the rest of TTLG, I have revisited the Available voice actors thread and looked around for any potentially available VAs. I've already contacted Shadow Creepr, one of the VAs recommended in the opening post of that thread, but not RedLeaf yet, as I'm not sure whether to contact her. I might, though. Just don't want to contact too many people at once.

Of the newer VA talent we know about here on the TDM forums, I'll try to contact Molly, just to ask whether she's still doing VA and would have some interest. If you know about any other female VAs who offered their help here on the forums, but I forgot about them, tell me. I'm all ears.

Now I'd need someone's help here at the forums, with uploading a 3,5 MB zip onto dropbox, or a similarly safe cloud storage space. I don't have a db account and I don't really want to start one, so if anyone is willing, maybe they could share their storage space for those 3,5 megs for a few weeks ? I'd like to send SC the link to the zip in a few days, just to strike while the iron is hot.

Obviously, we'll try several VA's recordings for the vocal set, just to be on the safe side. The more contributors we get, the better. (I'm aiming for 3-4 at least, hopefully we'll have enough good recordings to choose from.) And as for involving SC and other VAs who might have previously lent their talents to Thief FMs, we might even recruit their talent for future TDM needs. I've seen several people complain in recent years that it's occassionally difficult finding a female VA if someone needs some dialogue by ladies in their FM, so knowing about people willing to help out on a more regular basis could be helpful. I think we should value all the voice acting talent we can get, especially if the quality is clearly good.

2. Follow this download link, it has the existing male player voice files from the game. 82 voice files in total, the whole zip is 3,5 MB. Download the zip, listen to the files inside carefully, to get an idea. Also check out the player vocal script link I posted earlier in this thread. Both sources serve as acting direction.

3. Speaking of voice acting itself, subtlety is key here. None of the vocals should sound over-the-top or cheesy, they should sound like natural human reactions (e.g. to the strain of climbing, to getting injured, etc.). As also described in the earlier posts, the voice chosen for these female vocals should sound somewhere between mid-20s to early 50s, in terms of age range. That you could place it anywhere inside that age range and it wouldn't sound out of place.

To sum up the tone of voice we need for the female thief: A mature, for the most part calm and serious female voice (calm, not boring), neither too youthful or too old sounding. "Level-headed, tough but also human, believably vulnerable, woman in her 30s to mid-40s" would be a good descriptor. We want these vocals to be consistent in quality with the male player vocals we already have - so that both versions of the player character would sound like life-hardened, patient professional thieves. Believable human characters that players can feel immersed in while playing particular missions. I think none of us here want the lady thief to sound like a caricature, while the guy thief will sound all calm and suave. We want them to sound like equals, two sides of the same coin.

As for Shadow Creepr, she's promised to take a look at the material over the weekend, and maybe start work on it in her free time. She has the existing voice files for comparison, as well as the list on the wiki, so it should be easy enough.

There's no rush, really. I'll be grateful for any VA's participation, as long as the audio quality is good and the performance feels right. I've been slowly contacting several potential VAs just so we can have material to choose from, if someone's performance is good, but maybe not entirely what we're looking for.

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