Evan Desjardins

‘Crewelwork’ by Justin Torres [Amazon Original Stories]

I enjoyed recording this short memoir by author Justin Torres. Recorded for Brilliance Audio at DB Audio in Toronto.

Excerpt from Crewelwork on Soundcloud

I didn’t do the edit, though. It kind of sounds as if they sped up the read. Is that common? I know many listeners will turn up the playback speed on their devices to whiz through a book if they think they reader is going too slowly. Regardless, I enjoy these … Read the rest “‘Crewelwork’ by Justin Torres [Amazon Original Stories]”

‘Melanin’ by Naranie Tam with Kobena Aquaa-Harrison

I had the pleasure of recording, mixing and mastering this single by Nigerian singer Naranie Tam. She and multi-instrumentalist Kobena Aquaa-Harrison joined me at Blue Sound in Toronto in 2019 and recorded a couple improvised pieces including this one which we later developed, mixed and mastered together.

You can read more about the artist and the music in this lovely writeup on YAWA: https://yawamag.com/melanin-a-welcome-home/

From the article:

My Favorite thing about Melanin is how Naranie’s

Read the rest “‘Melanin’ by Naranie Tam with Kobena Aquaa-Harrison”

Grace m905 (knob feel review)

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Joe Rogan Voice AI

Earlier this year I collaborated with Toronto software start-up Dessa to produce a text-to-speech model with Joe Rogan‘s voice. Joe thought it was pretty trippy!

Can you tell real from fake? Try the blind test at: https://fakejoerogan.com/

Dessa published a rundown of the process in two parts on Medium:
Part 1:
RealTalk: This Speech Synthesis Model Our Engineers Built Recreates a Human Voice Perfectly
Part 2:
RealTalk (Pt. II): How We Recreated Joe Rogan’s Read the rest “Joe Rogan Voice AI”

Python – Prepend 100ms Bumper

I had the occasion to put some of the scripting I’ve been using to good use.

A recent voice-over editing project involved cutting e-learning material in several foreign language. The clips were destined to play back programmatically and the client required a ~100ms buffer before and after each clip to avoid stuttering during playback or having the end lopped off. Apparently this had been an issue before with the audio engine they’re using in their … Read the rest “Python – Prepend 100ms Bumper”

Python the Hard Way

I’ve been consulting with Toronto machine learning startup Dessa on an exciting audio based project. (more on that when the time is right)

The he engineers there have impressed me with what they’ve been able to accomplish in terms of analyzing and processing audio despite their inexperience working with audio in general. The experience has inspired me to get my feet wet with Python, the very popular and accessible programming language.

One of the best … Read the rest “Python the Hard Way”