[April 30, 2009] Leading Text-to-Speech (TTS) Vendor Cepstral in Strategic Deal With Virtual World Pioneer Anshe Chung Studios Tweet PITTSBURGH, PA, Apr 30, 2009 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Cepstral LLC today announced a strategic partnership with Anshe Chung Studios Ltd. (ACS), a leading developer and distributor of virtual goods in 3D online environments. The deal enables Virtual World users to have their avatars speak in the voice of their choosing, by typing what they want the avatar to say. Cepstral serves the audio from its hosted (SaaS) platform at VoiceForge.com. Currently VoiceForge offers the world's largest catalog of over 50 unique English voices, allowing users to have their avatar speak with the personality they choose. Voices range from novelty accents like Evil-Genius, Dallas, Top-Hat, Belle, and Vixen to classic young adults, American and British. Initially, ACS will use the technology in the 3D virtual chat environment IMVU. ACS has sold over 1.2 million pieces of flash-enabled furniture in use in IMVU, and users of that furniture will be able access streaming TTS immediately. Users who have not purchased furniture from ACS can still demo the VoiceForge TTS service provided they are in a room with flash-enabled ACS furniture. This opens up the TTS service to all 20 million current IMVU users. "Cepstral's VoiceForge service provides real-time surrogate voices for users. Their expansive voice variety is consistent with our mission to provide users with quality digital goods and online personality. Their elegant hosted solution made it a snap to integrate with our products. In looking for a long-term partner, it was also important to us that Cepstral owns all their speech technology and drives innovation in the speech technology field," said Guntram Graef, current CEO of ACS. A demonstration of the voices can be heard at: http://www.voiceforge.com/demo "ACS approached us to provide this capability to their users. They recognize that in a Virtual World, many users don't want to use their real world voice when chatting. VoiceForge allows the user to match a voice to their avatar. A proper lady avatar can use the Southern Belle voice, while a more whimsical avatar might use the French-Fry voice," said Cepstral CEO Craig Campbell. "Cepstral's VoiceForge service enhances the immersive experience of the Virtual World. ACS is a terrific partner to work with. I'm delighted to say that Anshe Chung Studios' huge presence in Virtual Worlds will expose speech technology to a mass audience that may otherwise never have used or considered traditional TTS." About Cepstral LLC Cepstral is a Text-to-Speech company based in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, which provides speech technologies for the spoken delivery of information. We build high quality, natural sounding voices for mobile, desktop, and server applications. VoiceForge is a hosted service delivering online TTS. We Build Voices(R). We Make the Internet Talk(R) About Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd. The Anshe Chung Studios have been founded in 2006 by virtual world pioneer Ailin Graef, who with her Second Life avatar "Anshe Chung" had created the first online game character that achieved a net worth in virtual assets equivalent to 1 million dollars. Today ACS is a leading supplier of virtual goods to users of virtual worlds, such as IMVU, Second Life, Twinity, SMeet and Entropia Universe. The Wuhan, China, based company is also a key provider of outsourcing solutions to game developers in Europe and the United States. Contact: Patrick Dexter 412-432-0400 Email Contact www.cepstral.com www.voiceforge.com Contact: +86 27 8782 1035 Email Contact www.anshex.com acs.anshechung.com SOURCE: Cepstral http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=B132819EC6F70086 http://www.cepstral.com http://www.voiceforge.com http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=834DE6793FD99606 http://www.anshex.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]