“Humans are still narrating books, but they sound so much like machines”
I heard this somewhere a few weeks ago.
Before voices could be generated or modulated with digital technologies, the standard for professional audiobook readings was that they should sound technically perfect. They were expected to demonstrate the consistency and precision of a carefully calibrated machine. Achieving this was the Holy Grail of audiobook performances because for a human this represents an exceptional feat of sensitivity and bodily control.
Now, fulfilling this condition increasingly becomes a choice.
What happens when this no longer requires exceptional skill and effort?
We take it for granted and look for new forms of value. Or we praise its absence, as long as it is substituted with a surprisingly effective replacement as the new valuable. We shift our attention toward other details previously overshadowed by this particular requirement.
This is what technology does. It isolates and automates specific areas of a particular activity until we are left with its bare-bones essence, or a new path opens for the uncovering of new forms of value.
Voice acting for professionally recorded audiobooks once required a systematic technique from performers, a particular “audiobook sound”. Now that digital technologies can emulate this with growing credibility, sounding too professional becomes “sounding so much like machines”.
Something comparable happened with musical performances. Once we could record multi-track performances, live performances evolved into a separate thing from the new experience of privately listening to music on demand. Historically, music performance was indistinguishable from live performance.
Now that fulfilling this condition of technical perfection is not the challenge it used to be, what will we value in these vocal performances? Why will some performances stand out and pull us into the narrative more than others?
While technological solutions do replace some skills, they also wake us up to the most human, most essential parts of our disciplines.