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Japanese Lab Creates 'Da Vinci' Voices 183

Mikki writes "Using methods employed in criminal investigations, the Japan Acoustic Lab has analyzed the skeletal structures of Leonardo Da Vinci and Mona Lisa's faces to replicate how their voices would have sounded." While Da Vinci is cool, I can think of a slew of other deceased notables worth talking with as well.
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Japanese Lab Creates 'Da Vinci' Voices

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  • Re:Ergh - yuk. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Friday May 19, 2006 @05:02AM (#15364059) Homepage Journal
    Huh? TFA opens fine in Opera and IE...

    And the article contains a link to the MSN IE 6.0 only site, where you can actually listen to the clips the article discusses (they appear to be wmp only audio files too)

    Utterly typical of MS to attempt to force their crap software on the world (but thank god its only a link to their crap content).
  • Paint and Sound (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @05:59AM (#15364214) Homepage Journal

    I remember something from about 10 years ago about people running an LP pickup through the grooves made in paint by a painters brush. The idea is that sound makes the brush vibrate and records the sounds in the paint.

    Apparently they were able to get the sound of the word "blue" out of a patch of blue paint so this painter must have been talking to himself (or somebody else) while he worked.

  • Re:Fine, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Friday May 19, 2006 @06:12AM (#15364245) Homepage
    It's worse than that. The skeletal anatomy is only going to give you a very vague idea, if that. There's just too many variables that are unaccounted for, a short list of examples:

    • Where did the person grow up.
    • What dialect did the people he spoke most to speak (parents, friends, teachers, relatives, neighbours etc)
    • What where his vocal-chords, tongue, lips and mouth like ? (for example, skeletal analysis will not tell you if someone has been smoking for 30 years or not)
    • Was he allergic to anything ? Nose open ? Size and shape of nose in general ?
    • What was his weight ?

    I'm fairly certain the unknowns add up sufficiently to make the entire exercise pointless. My guess is that given ten people with different voices, all raised in the same area, this method would not be capable of analysing their bone-structure and then correspond voice to person. (other than the relatively trivial job of getting the sex of the person correct, most women sound noticeably different from most men.)

  • Out of intrest (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19, 2006 @09:22AM (#15364888)
    Have they tried this on someone alive using like x-rays and what not for the skeletal structure and seen if it's even close?

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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