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
