I find the acapella voices on the mac to be ideal, they are fast, stable and comfortable to listen to.
----- Original Message ----- From: "erik burggraaf" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by theblind" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 8:00 PM Subject: Re: eloquence Well Chris, The original poster need a sertain language which is supported, apparently, by eloquence. That being the case, you can't blaim him for wanting to pin it down. Now here is my opinion on computer voices, and you can take it for what it's worth. The purpose of a computer voice is to get me information in as effective a manner as possible. As such, it needs to pronounce things properly, and it needs to speak very, and I mean very quickly. I have alex set as fast as he will go, and he's not fast enough for me. I sit at computers all day and half the night, and when I'm in my home I have a minimum of two computers on at once. The longer I have to wait around to get information, the less time I have to do anything with it. All that being said, Eloquence is an infernal piece of crap. It will run fast and speak clearly, so even though it's a piece of crap, I'll still use it if that's what's on offer. It is after all, a lot faster and crisper than dek access32, even though all other things being equal, dek access is more stable. When you try to read long blocks of text with eloquence, the pitch decruments until you think you're gonna lose a couple of pc speakers, then it screems back up again. If you type symbles in a specific way you can crash the speech out when it tries to read them back. It doesn't pronounce things all that much better or worse than most other speech engines, but even though dek access32 and espeak are also infernal pieces of crap, they are at least incredibly stable and low overhead. There are some pretty comfortable espeak variants out now, and if the espeak dll that comes out with the next stable nvda has more accurate american pronounciation, I'd be highly tempted to switch to get the speed up. When I want to read something for pleasure and the best I can get is a synthesizer, I tend to gravitate to acapella ryan who is farely smooth on my mobile phone at normal speaking speed, and who has very good inflection. The neo voices are passable as well, but I can't take them with me unless I convert the ebook to mp3. I never do though. MP3 drains my battery quickly, and ryan is just a bit more naturally inflected, so I'm content to use him. For practical purposes though, give me a fast and stable voice over a nice sounding one any day, though I must agree with you, alex is the very best digital speech I've ever heard. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's as good as digital speech could ever be. The realspeak voices are horriffic. The technology is absolutely primitive, and the american woman jennifer sounds like she has a cold. The ergonomic benefit of them wouldn't justify a scrap of the computer resources required to run them, smiles. Best, erik burggraaf Certified Technician Assistive Computing LTD Support and training Sales department: 888-828-2445 Support and Training: 888-255-5194 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website coming soon On 9-Nov-08, at 12:28 PM, Chris Gilland wrote: > Frankly, I'm not gonna get a flame going here, I'm gonna state my > opinion, but past that, I'm taking this off list. > > I frankly love! Eloquence. Yall may find me strange for sayiing > this, but I'll tell you what I cannot stand, and that is ESpeak. > Nor can I stand the RealSpeak Solo voices. Now those! things give > me a head ache. > > Now, Alex, in Leopard? Now there's! a voice! > > Chris. > ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Poehlman" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS > Xby theblind" <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 12:23 PM > Subject: Re: eloquence > > >> I looked at ibm via voice and ther is no tts I can find. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Jurgensen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> > >> To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac >> OS X by >> theblind" <[email protected]> >> Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 12:12 PM >> Subject: Re: eloquence >> >> >> Hi, >> >> I think it is called Viavoice, and possibly is made by IBM. >> >> Thanks for listening, >> Alex, >> >> >> On 9-Nov-08, at 6:02 AM, Will Lomas wrote: >> >>> want it for chinese >>> >>> On 9 Nov 2008, at 13:19, erik burggraaf wrote: >>> >>>> Why would you ever want such a thing? Except possibly for language >>>> support I can't imagine why any one would want elloquence when >>>> there is such a good array of digital speech. >>>> >>>> Best, >>>> >>>> erik burggraaf >>>> >>>> Certified Technician >>>> Assistive Computing LTD Support and training >>>> Sales department: 888-828-2445 >>>> Support and Training: 888-255-5194 >>>> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>>> >>>> Website coming soon >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On 9-Nov-08, at 4:50 AM, Will Lomas wrote: >>>> >>>>> hi can i get eloquence equivalent voices to work on the mac? >>>>> i thought i heard they were available to maybe use with voice >>>>> over? >>>>> regards will >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> > >
