Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Yeah, I guess I just don't give a shit about efficiency. Rather, I think I'm efficient enough where I'm at. I certainly read books or articles faster than most sighted people I know anyway. I guess I figure it's a decently fast speech rate, and you don't get choppiness or shortened syllables or whatever you want to call it, and that works for me. Awesome that you guys can crank it all the way the hell up though. I couldn't do it, so you've got something on me there! I think I start losing major understanding for Eloquence around 90 with no rate boost. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603623/#p603623 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up @musicalman:Yes, there is a version of the SpeechPlayer for current NVDA:https://addons.nvda-project.org/addons/ … er.en.html URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603617/#p603617 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I can understand Eloquence at the speed of 40 with rate boost on, how is that for a non native English speaker like me, and aged between 15 17? I am working on it to increase the speach rate more, and to understand it without any concentration. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603504/#p603504 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Hi all, I'm also a non native english speaker, but I don't think the challenge would be to understand any concepts or new words in the text I would be reading, personally. To me, the constant speeding up annoys me. Sure, I use my voices at a medium to fast range, (my default voice is eSpeak for multilingual purposes, at rate 70 with boost off and my prefered reading voice for english on the iPhone is Victoria at rate 100 which I'm very comfortable with), and all these rates are about the highest I can go before everything starts falling apart for me. Eloquence used to be in my list for a few years, except now for whatever reason IBM TTS for NVDA kinda... Doesn't decide to work on my instalation for whatever reason, but I've come to accept eloquence as a lost synth and I'm perfectly fine with using Espeak. That's just my opinion though. On a slightly related note, I agree with a point that has been stated earlier, where we were talking about how the voice needs to stay constant, or at least constant enough with it's inflections that you can focus on the content itself instead of the way the voice says things. I know a lot of people use Siri voices or vocalizer on their IOS devices, but me personally, I stick with Victoria precisely because of this fenomenon. Unit selection based concatonative voices, especially ones that are big, tend to have so much data in them for saying phrases that don't translate over for daily use, especially not with VO, for Siri itself, maybe, but not when reading quickly and not when you are trying to focus on what you're reading instead of the weird pronounciation glitches that can happen because of the way the units go together. This is really annoying when I'm reading in my native language, Hungarian, on IOS, since Mariska is the only voice available, and she, although only 43MB, has intonation and pronounciation errors in almost every sentence she says. And the annoying part is, I can't get used to the compact variants, either, at least not the vocalizer ones. Maybe the windows one core ones i can, but even then I find them a bit all over the place when it comes to inflection. One thing that I'm not sure if anyone does, but I find the phonetic punctuation add on extremely useful for truncating bits of text or punctuation marks into tiny little beeps. The most common of these is a 2000hz tone for a comma, which make it so much faster to read through bits of text. With Espeak you can't tell if the rizing intonation at the end of a sentence is due to a comma, a question mark, or a semicolon, so I made the comma beep to differenciate it. Also, the elipsis has a sound of it's own to differenciate it as well. Besides the punctuation marks, very common things NVDA says, like when navigating object review, such as top, bottom, left, and right, are beeps as well. This also ties in to the audio themes add on, allowing me to know what kind of control I am focussed on in a moments notice instead of having to listen to it at the end of an utterance like I usually would with any other operating system. Things like this speed up my workflow enough that is comfortable for me, although if I have to use a temprary copy of NVDA on someone's computer, I can deel without them, too, of course, it's not necessary to have them, but when working regularly, at least on Windows with NVDA< it helps me, personally. I hope this helped to bring more insight into the topic, and thanks for reading. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603478/#p603478 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I think efficiency is important in different ways to different people. For instance, I think some people want to be as efficient as possible all the time, no exceptions. So they'll routinely use speech rates which would kill me to listen to for any extended period. For me, I only care about efficiency when dealing with very verbose text. Like multi-column lists where I can't find an easy way to isolate what I want, or if I'm playing a game where messages go by very quickly.Say you're in a download manager and are downloading several files. The list of downloads has 5 columns: name, date, size, ETA and status, and you primarily care about status. That happens to me often. In those situations, I crank Eloquence to 50 percent with rate boost on. I know that's slow for some, but yeah. At that point, I can only make out bits and pieces, for example I can track what column I'm on, I can make out the first part of the file name, and I can look for specific text i.e. the status I care about. It requires concentration, but it's quicker than using a normal speaking rate and slogging through 5-10 seconds of text on each list item to get that status. I suppose there are better ways, such as messing with the navigator object, but remembering how to do that takes longer for me than just speeding the speech up. I know how, it just isn't something I do every day.As for why I would even complain about how choppy the speech is... For me, it's less a matter of choppiness and more a matter of whether the synth can speed up with ease.A good analogy might be this: Many people are impressed when they hear someone play a piece of music at an insanely fast speed. I admit I'm guilty of being overly impressed with such party tricks myself, and I'm far too adept musically to let those things impress me, but I still do. Even so, I am doubly or tripply impressed with fast playing if the speed doesn't seem to present a problem i.e. the rhythms are freakishly spot on, the tone doesn't suffer, the articulation is smooth and I can hear each note. In other words, I don't find speed offensive at all as some musicians might, (well I might if the song is not meant to be sped up). But I can't deal with a "struggling for speed" sound. I can appreciate the effort if you're just barreling through it to set a new world record, even at the expense of a good controlled performance. But I can't tolerate that on a synth I use every day. And I think I'm more picky than most about what is acceptable and what is not. Or maybe this pickiness is normal to an extent... that's why I made this topic to see what people thought.Eloquence seems to actually be meant for fast rates in my opinion. It doesn't do anything to suggest to me that it's struggling to attain that speed, apart from the occasional clicking which does annoy me, but I think it's gotten less prevalent over time. It creates choppy speech yes, but syllables/individual sounds aren't missing, slurred or distorted, and the basic voice quality isn't mangled.I suppose it's kind of an alien concept though if you're not accustomed to it.Come to think of it, the old Speech player add-on also sped up pretty well if I recall, but I'd prefer an American dialect. And it also sounded really... stiff. Not to mention, I'm not sure if there's a version of it for new NVDA or not. If there is, it could be another fast synth contender I believe.Hell I wish I had the skills to make my own speech synth, but I'm barely past writing simple programs in BGT so it ain't gonna happen any time soon, if at all. Given the speed at which I'm learning to code or lack thereof, I wouldn't get my hopes up lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603445/#p603445 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I think efficiency is important in different ways to different people. For instance, I think some people want to be as efficient as possible all the time, no exceptions. So they'll routinely use speech rates which would kill me to listen to for any extended period. For me, I only care about efficiency when dealing with very verbose text. Like multi-column lists where I can't find an easy way to isolate what I want, or if I'm playing a game where messages go by very quickly.Say you're in a download manager and are downloading several files. The list of downloads has 5 columns: name, date, size, ETA and status, and you primarily care about status. That happens to me often. In those situations, I crank Eloquence to 50 percent with rate boost on. I know that's slow for some, but yeah. At that point, I can only make out bits and pieces, for example I can track what column I'm on, I can make out the first part of the file name, and I can look for specific text i.e. the status I care about. It requires concentration, but it's quicker than using a normal speaking rate and slogging through 5-10 seconds of text on each list item to get that status. I suppose there are better ways, such as messing with the system focus and using object nav, but remembering how to do that takes longer for me than just speeding the speech up. I know how, it just isn't something I do every day.As for why I would even complain about how choppy the speech is... For me, it's less a matter of choppiness and more a matter of whether the synth can speed up with ease.A good analogy might be this: Many people are impressed when they hear someone play a piece of music at an insanely fast speed. I admit I'm guilty of being overly impressed with such party tricks myself, and I'm far too adept musically to let those things impress me, but I still do. Even so, I am doubly or tripply impressed with fast playing if the speed doesn't seem to present a problem i.e. the rhythms are freakishly spot on, the tone doesn't suffer, the articulation is smooth and I can hear each note. In other words, I don't find speed offensive at all as some musicians might, (well I might if the song is not meant to be sped up). But I can't deal with a "struggling for speed" sound. I can appreciate the effort if you're just barreling through it to set a new world record, even at the expense of a good controlled performance. But I can't tolerate that on a synth I use every day. And I think I'm more picky than most about what is acceptable and what is not. Or maybe this pickiness is normal to an extent... that's why I made this topic to see what people thought.Eloquence seems to actually be meant for fast rates in my opinion. It doesn't do anything to suggest to me that it's struggling to attain that speed, apart from the occasional clicking which does annoy me, but I think it's gotten less prevalent over time. It creates choppy speech yes, but syllables/individual sounds aren't missing, slurred or distorted, and the basic voice quality isn't mangled.I suppose it's kind of an alien concept though if you're not accustomed to it.Come to think of it, the old Speech player add-on also sped up pretty well if I recall, but I'd prefer an American dialect. And it also sounded really... stiff. Not to mention, I'm not sure if there's a version of it for new NVDA or not. If there is, it could be another fast synth contender I believe.Hell I wish I had the skills to make my own speech synth, but I'm barely past writing simple programs in BGT so it ain't gonna happen any time soon, if at all. Given the speed at which I'm learning to code or lack thereof, I wouldn't get my hopes up lol URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603445/#p603445 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I think efficiency is important in different ways to different people. For instance, I think some people want to be as efificient as possible all the time, no exceptions. So they'll routinely use speech rates which would kill me to listen to for any extended period. For me, I only care about efficiency when dealing with very verbose text. Like multi-column lists where I can't find an easy way to isolate what i want.Say you're in a download manager and are downloading several files. The list of downloads has 5 columns: name, date, size, ETA and status, and you primarily care about status. That happens to me often. In those situations, I crank Eloquence to 50 percent with rate boost on. At tha tpoint, I can only make out bits and pieces, for example I can track what column I'm on, I can make out the first part of the file name, and I can look for specific text i.e. the status I care about. It requires concentration, but it's quicker than using a normal speaking rate and slogging through 5-10 seconds of text on each list item to get that all-important status on each one. I suppose there are better ways, such as messing with the system focus and using object nav, but remembering how to do that takes longer for me than just speeding the speech up. I know how, it just isn't something I do every day.As for why you would even complain about how choppy the speech is... For me, it's less a matter of choppiness and more a matter of whether the synth can speed up with ease.A good analogy might be this: Many people are impressed when they hear someone play a piece of music at an insanely fast speed. I admit I'm guilty of being overly impressed with such party tricks myself, and I have the skills to be more critical than that. Even so, I am doubly or tripply impressed with fast playing if the speed doesn't seem to present a problem i.e. the rhythms are freakishly spot on, the tone doesn't suffer, the articulation is smooth and I can hear each note. In other words, I don't find speed offensive at all as some musicians might, but I can't deal with a "struggling for speed" sound. So if it sounds like the musician is barreling through it just to set a new world record at the expense of a good controlled performance, then I can't tolerate it, especially in my speech synth I use every day. And I think I'm more picky than most about what is acceptable and what is not. Or maybe this pickiness is normal to an extent... that's why I made this topic to see what people thought.Eloquence seems to actually be meant for fast rates in my opinion. It doesn't do anything to suggest to me that it's struggling to attain that speed, apart from the occasional clicking which does annoy me, but I think it's gotten less prevalent over time. It creates choppy speech yes, but syllables/individual sounds aren't missing, slurred or distorted, and the basic voice quality is mangled.I suppose it's kind of an alien concept though if you're not accustomed to it.Come to think of it, the old Speech player add-on also sped up pretty well if I recall, but I'd prefer an American dialect. And it also sounded really... stiff. Not to mention, I'm not sure if there's a version of it for new NVDA or not. If there is, it could be another fast synth contender I believe.Hell I wish I had the skills to make my own speech synth, but I'm barely past writing simple programs in BGT so it ain't gonna happen any time soon. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603445/#p603445 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up @12 it's a being up-to-speed with sighted people thing. Having slow speech makes us less productive. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603363/#p603363 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up my current is 85% with out rate boost, that's for most things, for online games and/or muds I go up to 95, and for articles I go with 70each 2 months or so, all speeds will jump up +5% so 85 will become 90, as I get slowly used to faster and faster URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603362/#p603362 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I'm using Eloquence, rate 75. I honestly do not understand the obsession of a chunk of the blind community for cranking their speech up as fast as possible. You get the same effect you get turning up the speed on audio books or Youtube, everything gets really choppy, and that's with every synth I've ever heard. I have no idea why you'd want to hear that constantly, but hey it works for people, so there you go. But it just baffles me. I'll grant that Eloquence seems to be the best synth at not making things as choppy as they might be, but you can't really avoid the basic issue, it's just the nature of speeding up speech, that's just what happens to it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603358/#p603358 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
2020-12-31
Thread
AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : GrannyCheeseWheel via Audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up I use 75 for most things, but go as high as 85 without rate boost for MUDs that have spammy combat. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/60/#p60 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Well, rate 70 with rate boost for normal things, for example reading the forum or programming. I slow it down to like 50 or so for novels or long articles/proofreading for school, but that's my normal rate. I'm actually surprised that's not as common as I thought it was. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603327/#p603327 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up 80 without rate boost over here. I can tolerate up to 100 *without* rate boost, but anything above 80 just starts to sound, IDK, unpleasant to me. Like I can understand it, but it requires a good bit more concentration, and it's definitely not something I could live with.Nothing can replace eloquence for me, personally. Mac Alex is probably the closest, the reason being that like eloquence, it doesn't sound too assertive. So many voices today kind of demand that you pay a good amount of attention to the voices themselves, their tones, pitch fluctuations etc, in addition to the actual content being consumed. With Mac Alex and Eloquence, though Mainly Eloquence, I rarely find myself thinking about what the voice itself sounds like because it's always just kind of there. It's only the output method, not part of the output, or at least it doesn't feel that way.I'm the same as regards audiobooks, 1 of the reasons I like narrators such as Stephen Fry so much, and why despite how much I like some of his books, David Walliams really makes me want to punch a brick wall sometimes, with all the stupid sound effects, screaming etc. Like STFU, please and thank you.Hmm, now I think about it, I should really try reading the ebooks at some point. I usually use Eloquence for that as well, thanks balabolka, I absolutely refuse to read using the Acapella voices provided with the Victor Reader Trek. I find that it helps to use find / replace to insert voice tags to lower the pitch for quotes, etc, helps take away from the monotony a little.If we had audible for ebooks, I might almost consider using them full time. Almost. Almost... URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603319/#p603319 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Interesting stuff. Yeah, non-english speakers wasn't something I was particularly focusing on, but I find it interesting to see what their take is.Good to know that I'm actually saying things which make sense to people URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603301/#p603301 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up As I am not a native English speaker, I definitely can't go that insane on speech rates. However, I can talk about my own language. Here, ESpeak is the best option. It does indeed sound weird with rate boost, however the variant I use, which is Steph sounds the best to me. I have started using it regularly with rate 40. Going towards 50s too, but still can't go that fast when reading texts. The only disadvantage is that it's kind of quiet, but if you use headphones that's ok, or at least it is to me. For Eloquence, regular rate is 70 here, without rate boost of course and 80 if I need to do something that requires speed, like Uno on the Playroom for example. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603299/#p603299 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Hello,I don't know how people go on that fast, but I cannot get above eloquence 85% without rate boost. And even with 85% I can look at short stuff not like tweets. But ı think a major factor is English is not my native language. I use Turkish on iPhone on 100% for short text, 80% for news and subtitles. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603292/#p603292 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Hello,I don't know how people go on that fast, but I cannot get above 85% without rate boost. And even with 85% I can look at short stuff not like tweets. But ı think a major factor is English is not my native language. I use Turkish on iPhone on 100% for short text, 80% for news and subtitles. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603292/#p603292 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Hi. I dont like speed, so I'm using vocalizer.I just can't understand the insane rates on espeak or other similar things, it's just for me really hard to understand URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603284/#p603284 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
2020-12-31
Thread
AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : GrannyCheeseWheel via Audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Nothing is as fast and responsive, while maintaining a clarity of tone as eloquence. I really wish we had other options. Vocalizer, Acapela, etc. are good for reading articles and things where you don't care about blazing fast, but they don't speed up well. That eSpeak croak bothers me too, but even eSpeak on normal bothers me. It sounds metallic and unpleasant. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603280/#p603280 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Wait... 70 percent with rate boost? That's insane!I guess if you really get into those rates, Eloquence and ESpeak are your only options. Would be interested to hear if there are others which can do that, though. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603278/#p603278 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up
Re: nitpicky about how smoothly speech synths can speed up Yup, eSpeak does certainly sound different after rate 100, or rate boost on past like 15. Bothers me none, as I have no reason to use it. It probably would though, as I would have it pretty fast (Eloquence rate boost on, rate 70 over here).About things like Vocalizer, things like that are the exact reason voices like Eloquence are so common in the blind community--they can go much faster. The only real time I like Vocalizer or something like that is when reading audiobooks. As such, on my phone I use Victoria at rate 100.And about your question: I agree with you; I am still using Eloquence for the same reason as I said above. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603274/#p603274 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
