Hi Laurel, Sarah, and Others, I'm not aware of the current status of third-party voices for the Mac, other than the Acapela Group's voices sold by Assistiveware (which are the Infovox/iVox voices that Laurel referenced). Ones that have been used by other VoiceOver users include those by Cepstral and Cereproc. However, it used to be that the Cepstral voices were just not as stable when used as a system voice for VoiceOver, as opposed to using it for simple text-to-speech conversions of documents or mail. I think that Cepstral has voices for US & UK English, Canadian French, Spanish as spoken in the Americas, German, and Italian. I did try one of the Cereproc Scottish voices, but I stopped using it after it crashed VoiceOver a few times. They may have improved things since then, since Cereproc synthesized a voice for Roger Ebert, the movie critic who just recently passed away, to use as a replacement voice on his Mac with VoiceOver when he had surgery of the larynx for cancer.
Assistiveware put in additional work to keep the Infovox/iVox voices they sell stable with VoiceOver. They don't offer the full complement of Acapela voices sold for Windows, although most of the voices are available. I use VoiceDream Reader on my iPhone to read documents, PDF files, etc. in other languages, and for their TTS reading you can get all the Infovox/iVox voices that are available for the Mac, plus ones for Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. I also know that there's a Japanese voice product called DTalker, that has been around for a while, and that is available for Snow Leopard and Lion. I think they worked with Assistiveware back when there was a separate offering of VisioVoice that was offered for French, Japanese, and Dutch, before other languages were supported with VoiceOver. As far as I know, there are no Hebrew voices yet available for use with VoiceOver on the Mac. For some languages individuals have compiled the eSpeak voices to use for TTS. I think that was true for Greek, before there was an Infovox/iVox option. I believe the Google Translate app on the iPhone now supports a Hebrew voice, but I don't know of any apps that let you read text in Hebrew on iOS or Mac OS X. HTH. Cheers, Esther On 16 Apr 2013, at 18:22, Sarah k Alawami wrote: > I think the a cappella voices work just as good. If those are the same as the > info vox voices excuse ignorance. lol! > On Apr 16, 2013, at 9:08 PM, Laurel Wheeler <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> I know that you can go into VO preferences and download extra voices for the >> mac in various languages. I've done this and love it. I also know that there >> are other places where you can buy, or get for free, voices that will work >> on the mac with voiceover that are not from Apple. I know for example that >> InfoBox, iBox has voices that can be gotten for the mac. I was wondering if >> any of you know of other places where we can get voices that will work with >> voiceover that are good. I see places on the web where I can download open >> shareware, but I don't think it looks too safe, so I'm wanting to get extra >> voices from places that we know are good. I would be particularly interested >> in Hebrew voices, if anybody knows of any, but even just in general. Where >> all can we get good voices from? >> Thanks >> Laurel <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
