What words did you find he ran together? I use him as my default all the time, and only thing I've found that sounds really weird, is when you try to log in anywhere and go to the usual "remember me," checkbox, when he speaks the "remember me," he sounds like he either has his teeth clenched, or has something in his mouth, which always makes me cringe, and I've always thought it really weird that he sounds like that. On Feb 8, 2015, at 7:41 PM, Alex Hall <mehg...@icloud.com> wrote:
> Hi all, > First, yes, this is about a speech synthesizer, and will thus be very > subjective. I wanted to see, though, if anyone else might have come to the > same conclusion I have. > > I got a Mac in the days of Lion, and quickly switched to the Vocalizer voices > (Serena or Lee, mostly). When we got new ones in Mavericks, I favored Ava, > and she is still among the best voices I know of, except a couple from Ivona. > In testing things for Yosemite, I kept switching from Ava to Alex, just to > see if any problems were being caused by the use of Nuance voices. I > accidentally made a startling discovery: Alex used to be pretty bad a few > years ago, but now, he's quite good. I've always liked the breathing thing, > but Alex would constantly run words together, mispronounce syllables, and > have other small problems that made him hard to understand, especially at > higher speeds. The more I use him in Yosemite, though, the more I look for > reasons to switch back to Ava, but the more those reasons allude me. Ava > misses the period after certain words, like "app", Alex doesn't; Ava says > "capital" before uppercase letters, although that setting is disabled, and > Alex doesn't; VoiceOver has delays when opening the VO Utility or bringing up > VO menus while using Nuance voices, but with Alex, I find no such delays; and > more. > > So, is it just me, or has Alex gotten way better? I don't mean "better" in > that VoiceOver runs faster while using Alex, although it certainly does. I > mean "better" in that, compared to a few years ago, he's far clearer when > speaking and makes far fewer mistakes. Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe I'm > the only one to notice, since the change was likely gradual and thus > invisible to those who have used Alex all along. Either way, I'm interested > in hearing your thoughts, and I'm more eager than ever to obtain a 64-bit > iPhone so I can start using Alex there as well. My only complaint about Alex > is that he doesn't speed up very well - sure, he can go crazy fast, but I > find I miss things at more than 70% speaking rate. Anyway, what do you all > think? If you haven't used Alex in a long time, give him another chance. If > you use him all the time, have you noticed anything? > > -- > Have a great day, > Alex Hall > mehg...@icloud.com > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
