I went and checked out this Cepstral voice. I am not a big fan of the Keynote Gold speech on the BN, but Keynote is far and away better than Cepstral, at least according to my ears. Cepstral seems to be just a tiny notch above Microsoft Sam and Company. I could be getting ahead of myself here, but as far as I know there are *no* plans to change the voice in any of the Pulse Data products. People keep demanding other voices, but we have heard nothing directly from either Jonathan or Dean on this matter. I don't even think other voices are being considered. I'm sure there are reasons for this, PDI knew what they were doing when they carried over their Keynote speech instead of using ViaVoice or another type of voice. I wonder if one of you wonderful PDI employees could shed some light on this?
Sarah -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of beth Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 1:08 PM To: Braillenote List Subject: [Braillenote] Fw: BlindNews: Cepstral Breaks the 2 MB VoiceBarrier: TinyText-to-Speech Voices Poised to Make Big Waves I thought this was of interest to this list, in that maybe the BN could use it. Beth ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leon Gilbert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Blind News Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 8:00 PM Subject: BlindNews: Cepstral Breaks the 2 MB Voice Barrier: TinyText-to-Speech Voices Poised to Make Big Waves > Market Wire (Press Release) > Wednesday, January 05, 2005 > > Cepstral Breaks the 2 MB Voice Barrier: Tiny Text-to-Speech Voices Poised to Make Big Waves > > PITTSBURGH, PA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 01/05/2005 -- Cepstral LLC announced a new software release capable of producing fully general, unit selection Text-to-Speech (TTS) voices that are under two megabytes in size on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show, CES, in Las Vegas. > > Cepstral's new Swift 3.1 engine is the first high-quality human sounding voice based on unit selection technology to reach this threshold. "This puts high quality Text-to-Speech within reach for consumer electronics manufacturers enabling them to place features onboard such as talking e-mail, talking e-books, spoken reminders, or talking directions," said CEO and co-founder Kevin Lenzo. > > By scaling high-quality voices down to 2 megabytes, they can potentially fit inside today's compact consumer electronics. This is important because the features afforded by TTS solve several real problems. For instance, there are safety concerns over portable devices being used while operating a vehicle. Text-to-Speech facilitates connectivity by offering a hands-free, eyes-free interface which in turn increases the utility and value of such devices. > > Devices that help people manage dynamic data are especially well suited for TTS. A synthetic voice offers unconstrained content delivery so whether the device is an email tool, navigation tool, learning tool, or bio-metric tool, Cepstral's TTS engine can speak the results. > > While tiny in size, these software voices can say anything. Currently, they are available only as male and female US English voices, but will soon be available in a half-dozen languages. Cepstral's voices are platform independent, running on Windows, WinCE, Linux, and Palm powered devices. The voices are scalable by design and can be tailored to meet specific size requirements anywhere from 2 MB and higher. "The bottom line is Swift 3.1 is the smallest high-quality, unit selection TTS engine on the market. Even at that, the Swift engine outperforms competing products that are hundreds of times its size in terms of platform independence, speed, and pronunciation accuracy," said Mr. Lenzo. > > Cepstral was founded in 2000 by Dr. Alan W. Black and Kevin Lenzo, two renowned speech synthesis scientists from Carnegie Mellon University. The company specializes in producing high-quality, small-footprint TTS for the embedded electronics markets. > > For more information about Text-to-Speech, or to schedule an interview with Kevin Lenzo, please call Craig Campbell at 412/432-0400 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Contact: > Craig Campbell > Cepstral, LLC > 412/432-0400 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.cepstral.com/ > SOURCE: Cepstral LLC > > http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=78527 > > > > > -- > BlindNews mailing list > > Archived at: http://GeoffAndWen.com/blind/ > Address message to list by sending mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Access your subscription info at: http://blindprogramming.com/mailman/listinfo/blindnews_blindprogramming.com > ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.pulsedata.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote
