Facebook Unveils New Audio Tools

Facebook has announced a list of new audio tools for soundbites, in-app podcasts and live audio rooms.

The audio tools will feature audio quality enhancements, captions, speech translations, and sound effects.

The new tools follow the rise of podcasts, audio messages and the more recent fame of Clubhouse, which has attracted big names like Elon Musk.

SoundBites will be a new format for short-form audio, a little like TikTok for audio. The tool will let you change your sound via filters and other effects.

Facebook’s long-form audio will feature in-app podcasts, which means users won’t have to leave the app. An expanded partnership with Spotify will bring the audio player to Facebook’s app as well, allowing users to listen to both music and podcasts. 

Facebook expects its new Clubhouse-style Live Audio Rooms will be popular with Groups. Participants will be able to tip creators with Facebook’s digital currency.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, suggests the tools will play a big part in the creative economy, enabling individuals and shifting power from traditional institutions to enable individuals to exercise their own creativity. But he also acknowledges the debate over the degree to which audio, particularly live audio, should be moderated. If misinformation is shared in Facebook audio rooms, should moderators shut it down? 

Facebook is currently setting up an Audio Creator Fund to pay users to create content for SoundBites and working on podcast features that will allow users to discover, share and listen to podcasts.

Clubhouse: the exclusive invite-only audio app

If you’re in the know, you’ll have heard about the new exclusive app Clubhouse. For the laggards, Clubhouse is an audio-based, invite-only iPhone app that lets you listen to a live conversation.

Being invite-only, you cannot simply download it off the app store and create an account. Like an exclusive yacht club, you’ll have to be invited by an existing member.

However, Clubhouse creators Paul Davidson and Rohan Seth recently stated that their aim is to open up the app to everyone, once the beta stage testing has been completed.

If you’re lucky enough to join at the moment, you can select any number of topics from tech and health to business. This opens up conversation rooms for you to listen to.

The conversation rooms are a little like conference calls, so once the conversation has finished, the room is closed. 

The app recently saw a steep rise in awareness due to Elon Musk and Bill Gates making appearances earlier in the year.

Musk’s chat with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev in January, helped propel Clubhouse to the top of the startup charts. As of 1 February 2021, Clubhouse had 2 million users and is now reportedly valued at $1 billion.

Clubhouse has announced a number of forthcoming new features like tipping and tickets, but right now is more of a status symbol app, featuring celebrities like Oprah, Drake, Chris Rock and of course Elon Musk.

When the app becomes available to the public and the exclusivity is lost, will the value diminish? Only time will tell.

Ballarat Begonia Festival Audio Tours

Hardy Audio has been working with the City of Ballarat to produce audio tours for this year’s Ballarat Begonia Festival.

The audio tours delve into the rich history of Ballarat’s Botanical Gardens, the story of the festival and begonias, and the people behind the annual event today.

To share Ballarat’s history with the towns visitors and residents alike, the audio tours can be scanned on-location at the gardens, via unique QR codes.

The audio tours are designed to be listened to whilst exploring the conservatory and gardens to learn more about the festival, past and present. They can also be listened to on The Ballarat Begonia Festival website here.

Contact Hardy Audio if you would like to find out more about QR Code audio tours.

About The Ballarat Begonia Festival

Ballarat’s Botanical Gardens were placed near Lake Wendouree in 1858, seven years after the first Ballarat gold rush. 

By the 1930s the begonia displays at the gardens had become famous across the state, and the subject of Ballarat’s postcards.

In March 1938, a Floral Festival was held to celebrate Ballarat’s centenary. The festival was so successful, Ballarat decided to hold the festival every year over 3-days on the March long weekend.

Today, The Begonia festival has become a garden-based horticultural festival that showcases the city’s natural assets, including its unique and rare collection of Begonias.

Will AI be the new path for voice overs?

Sonantic co-founders Zeena Qureshi and John Flynnfounders believe using AI technology to augment actors’ voices will be the new normal in less than 5 years.

The London based company has created what it claims is the first artificial intelligence voice models that sound genuinely human, and capable of expressing a wide range of human emotions, from fear and sadness to joy and surprise.

Sonantic records the voice actors’ performances and utilises deep learning algorithms to augment the data captured.

“The point of this isn’t to put voice actors out of work. Rather, it gives a readable, reviewable script to creators much earlier in the creative process, so they can listen to the dialogue, and change it much earlier in the process,” said co-founder Zeena Qureshi.

Sonantic suggests film and game studios will not be the only beneficiaries of this new AI. They believe voice over artists can also maximise their time and talent by turning their voices into a scalable asset, because the technology can use their voices to create different variations.

To demonstrate the technology, Sonantic have released a demo video (below) highlighting their partnership with games developer, Obsidian Entertainment.

Although, does this AI voice technology have serious ramifications in the world of deep fake?

Recently, three Tom Cruise videos were anonymously posted to TikTok from an account called @deeptomcruise. The videos were revealed to have been created by Chris Ume. 

Watch the breakdown of Chris’s deep fake technology below.