I would think te reason he hasn't changed his voice is that it's HIS voice and would probably confuse people if he had a more human sounding voice
A commercial product isn't really HIS voice, but yes, I do understand the physiological need of most humans to view one's voice as something "personal" and as part of their "self image."
But why would another voice be "confusing?" Are there really that many people who don't realize Stephen Hawking's speaks via a device?
Frankly, I don't care what Stephen Hawking sounds like. I pay more attention to what he has to say...
Hawking hasn't changed his voice because he doesn't want to. He said his first voice was horrible and unintelligible then he found a mechanical voice he liked.
He said there was also some irony in that it sounded mechanical like a call center. He said it's his voice now however and he wants people who cannot speak for themselves to know that they can grow up and sound just like him.
These days, I doubt if many people with communication disabilities who are trying out "augmentative communication" devices are opting for the vintage Dectalk speech synth sound.
Today's generation of speech synths are of much better quality today and far cheaper, etc. Dectalk was distinctly "male" sounding. There's more to emulating a female voice that simply raising pitch. I'd think a female in need of a augmentative communication device would want one that sounds more "female," such as the young lady in the video below is using.
She talks about using several
different speech synth devices since a young age, and gives a demo of using two. But she's young. And the young are usually more open to embracing change...
True. That voice is his signum and changing it at this point would be like New Coke.
Actually, the formula for "Coke" has been changed many times over the product's lifetime. But what people don't realize has changed, won't freak them out, I suppose...
Sure... Dectalk has that "retro" quality about it, but there's certainly nothing unique about Dectalk. "Fred" on OS X emulates it fairly closely as does the old Speak-n-Spell toys from the 1970s, along with a zillion other old devices and toys.
I'm not sure whether he has checked out the market lately though... from his blog:
The best he's heard, really? It sounds no better than SAM, a speech synth I toyed around with on Commodore 64 some 30 years ago. The built-in OS X speech synth sounds a hundred times more natural.
...
The built-in OS X voices are beginning to show their age compared with the latest and greatest in speech synthesis. As always, time (and technology) marches on...
