Holy cow! You can get eloquence on the Mac?
Now this! I gotta hear more about!
Chris.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Esther" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by
theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 11:57 PM
Subject: Classic Mac Voices: Fred and Bruce [was Re: thinking about
switching]
Hi Tasha,
You wrote:
Hi list, I'm thinking about possibly getting a mac, but I had a few
questions.
3. Voices. I've heard a sample of the Alex voice, and am not impressed.
It has the same weird emphases and prenunciations as a lot of the more
'human-sounding" tts's i've heard. are there other voices that either
come on the mac or that i can buy separately that are comparable to
eloquence in that they might sound robotic, but they are responsive and
don't have any weird clicks/emphases? It's going to be very hard for me
to give up eloquence. even viavoice, which i know you can get for the
mac, doesn't compare at all.
and Alex replied:
Hi,
Fred or Bruce or even Ralph for Mac that come built in may sound good.
I'd guess that as Alex suggests, either Fred or Bruce might better suit
your preferences. They hold up to faster playing rates than Alex (the
Mac voice in Leopard) does. However, the easiest way to let you judge is
to point you to a sound sample. Try listening to the Screenless
Switchers podcast episode that Darcy and Holly did to demo iTunes after
it first became accessible in March 2007. Since you may not be an iTunes
user, I'll point you to their RSS feed for episode 10, March 15, 2007.
The mp3 file is 11.5 MB in size. The voice used for iTunes is Fred,
slowed down to a rate of about 60:
The direct link is to:
http://www.screenlessswitchers.com/podcasts/ssp_010_03-15-07.mp3
Those of you who use iTunes (on Mac or PC) can find this podcast episode
at the iTunes Store as:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=43573664&id=161020459
(If you select that link in Safari or other web browser with iTunes open,
your iTunes session should be set to the iTunes Store at the podcast page
for Screenless Switchers and with the March 15, 2007 Episode selected in
the Songs Table. On Windows you may be prompted for permission to allow
the redirection.)
To listen to a sample of Bruce, I'm pointing you to a sample joke dialog
that was posted to this list 8 months ago:
http://www.lioncourt.com/sample.mp3
The voices used are Alex and Bruce.
Finally, a bit of history about the "Fred" voice. This is also the voice
that Dr. Stephen Hawking, the famous scientist and author of "A Brief
History of Time" used for over 20 years in his voice synthesizer.
(Hawking suffers from ALS or "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" -- more
popularly known as "Lou Gehrig's disease" for the baseball Hall of Fame
player and team mate of Babe Ruth who held several major league batting
and grand slam records, along with most valuable player awards before he
contracted this disease at age 35 and died 2 years later. ALS is a
progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells and motor
functions.)
There's a TidBITS article from April 2003 on "Catching Up with the Voice
of Macintosh: Fred" that you can read at:
http://db.tidbits.com/article/7140
It's about the person who supplied the "voice of the Macintosh" at it's
1984 debut. Read and enjoy.
Cheers,
Esther
