The Communication Cube

[Null]

I use ai mainly as a better google and suspect must people do too.

I'm using it to be lazy by having books read to me.

Software: Lector + SherpaTTS

 

[pyrat]

NOYB is asking the EU comission to orderly repeal the EU-US Data Privacy Framework because the US supreme Court just ruled that the FCC can't be independent because of the US Constitution. Since the EU legislation requires an independent data protection authority and the US had nominated the FCC, which can't be independent, the privacy framework won't comply with EU law, just like Privacy Shell and Safe Harbour were shot down in the courts. Well I doubt anyone really believed it was solid, given incompatible legislations, but this moves the courtain we're not supposed to look behind...

 

[kuru]

I'm using it to be lazy by having books read to me.

Software: Lector + SherpaTTS

How's the performance, does your phone get hot/bog down, or are there long pauses between the chunks where it has to compute before the next output?
And how is the quality, does it sound natural/better than the google network voices?

I've been using google network voices in FBReader, but was never really happy with the quality. The offline ones are worse, rather robotic.
Piper-TTS is quite performant running on Rk3588, it runs in real time, but it's about the same quality as the google online stuff.
Kokoro-TTS on the other hand is a big difference, the voices sound very natural. But it's quite a lot slower and fully loads all eight cores all the time. I'll try to convert the ONNX file to RKNN format with the rockchipNPU-toolkit2 to hopefully make it run on the NPU.

 

[Null]

How's the performance, does your phone get hot/bog down, or are there long pauses between the chunks where it has to compute before the next output?

There are noticeable pauses. But then I am running the apps on a phone that was released in 2022, and it has never been the most powerful of devices.

Oukitel WP18 - Specifications

Specifications of the Oukitel WP18. Dimensions: 83 x 174.8 x 18.5 mm, Weight: 380 g, SoC: MediaTek Helio A22 (MT6761), CPU: 4x 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A53, GPU: IMG PowerVR GE8300, 660 MHz, RAM: 4 GB, 1600 MHz, Storage: 32 GB, Display: 5.93 in, IPS, 720 x 1440 pixels, 24 bit, Battery: 12500 mAh...

www.devicespecifications.com

And how is the quality, does it sound natural/better than the google network voices?

The voices sound pretty natural to me. You can test them out at https://huggingface.co/spaces/willwade/sherpa-onnx-tts

 

[Djoga'Ro]

I asked GTP-5.6 Sol

Spoiler: Prompt

Hi. What is J-Pop trying to harden the population for by being more stressfull than Gabber or Death Metal?

and got

Spoiler: Response

If you mean the peculiar phenomenon where some J-Pop feels more neurologically exhausting than music explicitly designed to sound violent, then yes—there is a plausible audio-production explanation. It is probably not a covert resilience program.

A lot of modern J-Pop is extremely information-dense. You can get, simultaneously, fast vocal melodies, frequent chord changes, countermelodies, busy drums, synth arpeggios, guitar fills, backing vocals, sound effects, and very little empty space. The arrangement may change substantially every few bars. Your auditory system therefore gets fewer opportunities to settle into a stable prediction.

Gabber, by comparison, can be brutally loud and fast, but often has comparatively simple perceptual organization: kick kick kick kick, repeating bass/harmonic material, recurring loops. Once your brain has inferred the pattern, much of the apparent extremity becomes predictable.

Death metal has a similar paradox. It may contain blast beats, distortion, growls, rapid guitar work, and complex rhythms, but its sound frequently forms relatively coherent perceptual "blocks": distorted guitars occupy one broad texture, drums another, vocals another. Dense, certainly, but often stylistically consistent over a section.

J-Pop can instead attack you with continuous novelty:

• very bright mastering and prominent upper mids;
• aggressive compression/limiting, reducing quiet moments;
• densely layered instrumentation;
• vocals kept highly intelligible and forward despite the dense backing;
• rapid harmonic rhythm and unusually colorful chord progressions;
• frequent transitions, fills, modulations, and arrangement changes;
• multiple simultaneous melodic lines competing for attention.

The important distinction is therefore acoustic intensity versus cognitive load. Gabber may punch your cochlea harder. Death metal may sound more threatening. Hyper-dense J-Pop can make your auditory cortex fill out paperwork at 180 BPM.

So, as for what Japan is hardening the population for: based purely on the sonic evidence, apparently processing seventeen independent streams of information while somebody modulates to a new key and a cheerful anime character explains the power of friendship.

I don't know whether I've learned something useful.

 

[TeDaDeS]

I asked GTP-5.6 Sol

Spoiler: Prompt

Hi. What is J-Pop trying to harden the population for by being more stressfull than Gabber or Death Metal?

and got

Spoiler: Response

If you mean the peculiar phenomenon where some J-Pop feels more neurologically exhausting than music explicitly designed to sound violent, then yes—there is a plausible audio-production explanation. It is probably not a covert resilience program.

A lot of modern J-Pop is extremely information-dense. You can get, simultaneously, fast vocal melodies, frequent chord changes, countermelodies, busy drums, synth arpeggios, guitar fills, backing vocals, sound effects, and very little empty space. The arrangement may change substantially every few bars. Your auditory system therefore gets fewer opportunities to settle into a stable prediction.

Gabber, by comparison, can be brutally loud and fast, but often has comparatively simple perceptual organization: kick kick kick kick, repeating bass/harmonic material, recurring loops. Once your brain has inferred the pattern, much of the apparent extremity becomes predictable.

Death metal has a similar paradox. It may contain blast beats, distortion, growls, rapid guitar work, and complex rhythms, but its sound frequently forms relatively coherent perceptual "blocks": distorted guitars occupy one broad texture, drums another, vocals another. Dense, certainly, but often stylistically consistent over a section.

J-Pop can instead attack you with continuous novelty:

• very bright mastering and prominent upper mids;
• aggressive compression/limiting, reducing quiet moments;
• densely layered instrumentation;
• vocals kept highly intelligible and forward despite the dense backing;
• rapid harmonic rhythm and unusually colorful chord progressions;
• frequent transitions, fills, modulations, and arrangement changes;
• multiple simultaneous melodic lines competing for attention.

The important distinction is therefore acoustic intensity versus cognitive load. Gabber may punch your cochlea harder. Death metal may sound more threatening. Hyper-dense J-Pop can make your auditory cortex fill out paperwork at 180 BPM.

So, as for what Japan is hardening the population for: based purely on the sonic evidence, apparently processing seventeen independent streams of information while somebody modulates to a new key and a cheerful anime character explains the power of friendship.

I don't know whether I've learned something useful.

It could have responded with: Yes, Japan hardens their population with J-Pop.
In comparison with ChatGPT, I noticed that Gemini sometimes does respond with much shorter and brief replies instead.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

It could have responded with: Yes, Japan hardens their population with J-Pop.
In comparison with ChatGPT, I noticed that Gemini sometimes does respond with much shorter and brief replies instead.

But what for?

@Null I consider you an expert on this, ye ol' Hatsune fanboy. What for?

 

[TeDaDeS]

I like these homebrew 8bit computer projects, this channel has an extensions on the breadboard computer design from Ben Eater:

But what for?

I think it just expresses the feeling of (urban) youth in Japan. If you've ever been in an arcade in Japan the same chaotic experience is expressed in their songs. I guess it hits different for Japanese people compared to foreigners.

 

[Null]

What for?

It's so the world doesn't forget about Ea-nāṣir and his inferior quality copper.

 

[TeDaDeS]

It's so the world doesn't forget about Ea-nāṣir and his inferior quality copper.

なに
Yes, Nanni.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

It's so the world doesn't forget about Ea-nāṣir and his inferior quality copper.

Wow, wouldn't have thought that that's so important to them.

 

[Null]

wouldn't have thought that that's so important to them.

Well they were the world's premier copper quality inspectors back then. They got the job when the Picts were found to have been taking bribes.