----- Original Message -----
From: "David" <[email protected]>
To: "Chip McCain" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: Synthesizer Question
Going to the link provided, and listening to some of the sound examples
available on the page, I have one note to make. Specially Donna, sounded
just about the same as Crystal from At&T, and Tom did clearly make his
relationship with some of the AT&T voices. No wonder, since it seems from
the text, that they are developed based on technology from At&T.
Now, having all of that said, and this is based on the few sound examples
they provided, keep in mind one good place to go when looking for new SAPI
voices on your computer.
http://nextup.com/
I don't know neither Donna, nor Tom. But I have a few At&T voices on my
system here. They all seem to sound wonderfully, whenever you let them
read stuff like the weather forecast. For reading articles, they somehow
get a bit too boring in their modulation. Furthermore, they seem to get in
trouble, whenever they run into "new" words. That is, when they come
across a word that somehow is not "in their vocabulary". That could be,
when you meet modern-technology words and terms, or when they run into
names. Instead of trying to pronounce the stuff, based on a set of rules,
they tend to simply spell out, or even skip the whole thing. And specially
so, when they come across some kind of national characters, not found in
the English alphabet. All of these things, Eloquence does handle to a far
better degree, and even some of the other Scansoft/Nuance voices have
better handling in those matters.
OK, agreed, AT&T Crystal and Mike and the rest of that gang, likely are
based on a somehow outdated technology. Donna and Tom, might be based on
newer technology and hence perform far better. Really hard to say, when
you only hear pre-entered messages.
Am I trying to discourage anyone from using the voices? far from it. I
just thought to let you know my experiences. Too many times, I have bought
voices for my computer, thinking that
"Wow, that voice sounds perfect, in the provided example. What if I
could have him or her to read my documents..."
Then, when downloaded and instaled, I realize how poorly they perform in
the real life. One such example, was a voice I got a while ago. She
sounded just fine, and I can well enough make use of her - all the time
you keep her at the standard speed. But don't you ever dare to speed her
up, or slow her down. The sound quality gets really degraded, once you
touch the speed buttons. And honestly, I don't find that kind of product
worth something like $35. Specially not, when you can get other voices,
same price, but far better performing. Best thing is, if you can get an
interactive test of the voice. I.e, when the seller offers you an edit box
on their web page, where you can enter your own text, and have it spoken
back to you. Then at least, you know what you are going for. Smile.
Still, thanks for the tip of the two voices. Was an interesting listening.
And the web page was quite informative as to the history of the voices, in
short terms.
out,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chip McCain" <[email protected]>
To: "Mike Pietruk" <[email protected]>
Cc: "GW Info List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: Synthesizer Question
The voices are available from Nuance. Take a look at:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/newvoice.htm
A blurb from that page:
All of the VIP voices have been produced using the Speechify
text-to-speech system. (The official Speechify name for our "Donna" voice
is "Mara".) Speechify was originally a product of the Speechworks
company, based on technology developed by AT&T. Speechworks was purchased
by Scansoft in 2003, and Scansoft merged
with Nuance in 2005.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Pietruk" <[email protected]>
To: "Mike Rogers" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: Synthesizer Question
Mike
A big advantage that Doubletalk (and its successor TripleTalk) have is
that they are hardware rather than software based.
I agree with you that they are far better than eloquence or Dec and use
TripleTalk whenever possible.
That brings up something else to mind.
The National Weather Service, in their NOAA weather radio service, use
synthesized voices which sound excellent to me. They currently carry
the
names Craig (for the male) and Donna (for the female).
Are either of these available for use with a screen reader such as WE
and,
if so, what are their pricing?
Unforgiveness is the poison we drink, thinking it'll kill the other
person.
unknown
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