Hi Tasha,
You wrote:
Hi list, I'm thinking about possibly getting a mac, but I had a
few questions.
3. Voices. I've heard a sample of the Alex voice, and am not
impressed. It has the same weird emphases and prenunciations as a
lot of the more 'human-sounding" tts's i've heard. are there other
voices that either come on the mac or that i can buy separately
that are comparable to eloquence in that they might sound robotic,
but they are responsive and don't have any weird clicks/emphases?
It's going to be very hard for me to give up eloquence. even
viavoice, which i know you can get for the mac, doesn't compare at
all.
and Alex replied:
Hi,
Fred or Bruce or even Ralph for Mac that come built in may sound good.
I'd guess that as Alex suggests, either Fred or Bruce might better
suit your preferences. They hold up to faster playing rates than Alex
(the Mac voice in Leopard) does. However, the easiest way to let you
judge is to point you to a sound sample. Try listening to the
Screenless Switchers podcast episode that Darcy and Holly did to demo
iTunes after it first became accessible in March 2007. Since you may
not be an iTunes user, I'll point you to their RSS feed for episode
10, March 15, 2007. The mp3 file is 11.5 MB in size. The voice used
for iTunes is Fred, slowed down to a rate of about 60:
The direct link is to:
http://www.screenlessswitchers.com/podcasts/ssp_010_03-15-07.mp3
Those of you who use iTunes (on Mac or PC) can find this podcast
episode at the iTunes Store as:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=43573664&id=161020459
(If you select that link in Safari or other web browser with iTunes
open, your iTunes session should be set to the iTunes Store at the
podcast page for Screenless Switchers and with the March 15, 2007
Episode selected in the Songs Table. On Windows you may be prompted
for permission to allow the redirection.)
To listen to a sample of Bruce, I'm pointing you to a sample joke
dialog that was posted to this list 8 months ago:
http://www.lioncourt.com/sample.mp3
The voices used are Alex and Bruce.
Finally, a bit of history about the "Fred" voice. This is also the
voice that Dr. Stephen Hawking, the famous scientist and author of "A
Brief History of Time" used for over 20 years in his voice
synthesizer. (Hawking suffers from ALS or "Amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis" -- more popularly known as "Lou Gehrig's disease" for the
baseball Hall of Fame player and team mate of Babe Ruth who held
several major league batting and grand slam records, along with most
valuable player awards before he contracted this disease at age 35 and
died 2 years later. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease
that affects nerve cells and motor functions.)
There's a TidBITS article from April 2003 on "Catching Up with the
Voice of Macintosh: Fred" that you can read at:
http://db.tidbits.com/article/7140
It's about the person who supplied the "voice of the Macintosh" at
it's 1984 debut. Read and enjoy.
Cheers,
Esther
