In the article and video, Paul Maunder explores Soundly’s new Voice Designer tool and discovers a surprising array of potential uses.

If you work in audio post there’s a good chance you’ll have heard of Soundly. It’s a cloud based sound effects library which includes a powerful search engine and the ability to index and organise your entire local sound library with extensive metadata support. Soundly integrates with your workflow and tools and allows you to drag and drop sound effects into any editor. It has custom integration with Pro Tools, Logic, Premiere Pro, Nuendo, Cubase, Reaper, After Effects, Wwise and Final Cut Pro. Importing sounds from Soundly into any of those applications is done through a single button click. Sounds get added directly to your timeline at the current cursor position.

The latest update to Soundly adds a new feature called Voice Designer. Voice Designer is a voice creation tool which can generate speech from text. A variety of different languages, accents and voices are available and there are controls for both speed and pitch. There are several potential uses for Voice Designer, including simulating airport announcements, digital assistants, background dialogue, TV commentary and navigation systems. Also, when you need a guide track voice over to work with until the final voice over has been recorded, Soundly’s Voice Designer feature provides a quick and convenient way to do this.

One particularly useful feature of Voice Designer is the Place It feature. This allows you to effectively place a voice in an acoustic setting by simulating a variety of P.A systems and audio playback devices in a number of different spaces and settings. Several presets combining these are provided or you can customise the combination of speaker and space as required by clicking on the settings icon within the Place It section. There’s even a setting called Wall which, as the name suggests, lets you simulate the effect of the sound originating in another room.

The Voice Designer feature in Soundly is a nice addition and I’ve already found it useful for two guide voice overs and some background announcements in a railway station scene. To see and hear it in action check out the video below.

Soundly offers several price plans as well as a free limited-features version. Hit the button below to find out more!