Well, that just goes to show that people have different preferences, and
that's fine. My girlfriend started out reading books from Bookshare on her
Book Sense, first with Kate, then with Paul. But she quit after a few books,
saying that if she was going to listen to audio books with synthesised
speech, she would rather listen to her JAWS with Eloquence instead of Kate
or Paul. She does a lot of proofreading for Bookshare on her PC, so she has
definitely gotten accustomed to, and even to like, Eloquence and doesn't
read anything nonhuman-read on her Book Sense anymore.
By the way, I misspoke earlier: I should have said that the pitch of the
Book Sense jumps around even within individual syllables, not within
individual words. It's natural for pitch to jump around within words. The
description I was looking for last night of how Paul sounds to me came to me
after I posted my last message. He reminds me of a tape with a good deal of
wow and flutter in it. That makes him harder to understand at higher rates
of speech where the smoother Eloquence is still intelligible.
As to resources, I thought the Kate and Paul voices were more resource
intensive than Eloquence, although I may be misremembering something here.
Evan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Missy Hoppe" <[email protected]>
To: "Booksense Support" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 7:20 AM
Subject: Re: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense?
very well said. The speech on the Booksense is about as pleasant as a tts
voice can be, but I'm still one of those who, given the choice, prefers
human narrators whenever possible. I don't understand all the praise for
eloquence, though. I use it on my computer due to high speeds and being
responsive, but for a reading device like the booksense, it definitely
wouldn't be my first choice. As great as it is, it just sounds to
mechanical for pleasure reading. Still, for my main computer, it's the
only realistic option for daily use, and since I've been reading a lot of
fan fiction lately, I've somewhat gotten used to the way eloquence reads,
but I'd still never want it for the booksense.
Just my opinion, of course.
Missy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dianne B. Phelps" <[email protected]>
To: "'EVAN REESE'" <[email protected]>; "'GW-micro'"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 12:33 AM
Subject: RE: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense?
I think the reason we don't see something like Elliquence is that there is
only so much memory to hold what is necessary to generate speech and
sounds
on a divice the size of the Book Sense. After my disappointment with the
Victor Reader stream, I am amazed the Book Sense is as good as it is.
Having said that, there are people among us who simply are not comfortable
reading with the speech synthesizer. Two of my friends, people I have
known
for many years, simply won't tolerate anything that isn't human narrated,
and that's ok. Reading needs to be something comfortable and as long as
there are choices, there is certainly nothing wrong with opting for
digitally recorded material rather than speech synthesis.
Dianne
-----Original Message-----
From: EVAN REESE [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 6:22 PM
To: GW-micro
Subject: Re: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense?
True, human readers mispronounce things, but my Window Eyes with Eloquence
mispronounces a lot less than the voice on my Book Sense. I wish they
would
have just installed Eloquence on the Book Sense. It's very understandable
at
high rates of speech and it has substantially better pronunciation than
what's in there now.
Evan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Terri Pannett" <[email protected]>
To: "Dianne B. Phelps" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 7:48 PM
Subject: Re: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense?
Don't change the voices! They're great!
They mispronounce words, but so do human readers! A human reader should
know better, but some people never learned phoenics.
Terri Amateur Radio call sign KF6CA.
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If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender
only. If your reply would benefit others on the list andyour message is
related to GW Micro or the BookSense, then please consider sending your
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To manage your subscription to gw-booksense, visit:
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If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only.
If your reply would benefit others on the list andyour message is related to GW
Micro or the BookSense, then please consider sending your message to
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