Fred? lol, that voice sounds aweful, reminds me too much of either the dectalk voices, or the Vera reading machine we used to use when I went to FSDB. Things have definitely come so far sense then. On Feb 8, 2015, at 8:17 PM, Ray Foret Jr <[email protected]> wrote:
> Alex, it ain't just you dude. Alex is tons better than he used to be in > every respect you mentioned. Much smoother, faster, way more responsive, > and, other than Fred, which I am using at the moment for strictly sentamintal > purposes, Alex is the best of all the voices out there. In fact, he's better > even than the Acapela voices which, if I may be frank, have taken severle > steps backward from where they used to be. > > > Sincerely, > The Constantly Barefooted Ray > > Still a happy Mac, Verizon Wireless iPhone 6+ and Apple TV user! > > Sent from my Mac, > the only computer with full accessibility for the blind built-in > >> On Feb 8, 2015, at 6:41 PM, Alex Hall <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hi all, >> First, yes, this is about a speech synthesizer, and will thus be very >> subjective. I wanted to see, though, if anyone else might have come to the >> same conclusion I have. >> >> I got a Mac in the days of Lion, and quickly switched to the Vocalizer >> voices (Serena or Lee, mostly). When we got new ones in Mavericks, I favored >> Ava, and she is still among the best voices I know of, except a couple from >> Ivona. In testing things for Yosemite, I kept switching from Ava to Alex, >> just to see if any problems were being caused by the use of Nuance voices. I >> accidentally made a startling discovery: Alex used to be pretty bad a few >> years ago, but now, he's quite good. I've always liked the breathing thing, >> but Alex would constantly run words together, mispronounce syllables, and >> have other small problems that made him hard to understand, especially at >> higher speeds. The more I use him in Yosemite, though, the more I look for >> reasons to switch back to Ava, but the more those reasons allude me. Ava >> misses the period after certain words, like "app", Alex doesn't; Ava says >> "capital" before uppercase letters, although that setting is disabled, and >> Alex doesn't; VoiceOver has delays when opening the VO Utility or bringing >> up VO menus while using Nuance voices, but with Alex, I find no such delays; >> and more. >> >> So, is it just me, or has Alex gotten way better? I don't mean "better" in >> that VoiceOver runs faster while using Alex, although it certainly does. I >> mean "better" in that, compared to a few years ago, he's far clearer when >> speaking and makes far fewer mistakes. Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe >> I'm the only one to notice, since the change was likely gradual and thus >> invisible to those who have used Alex all along. Either way, I'm interested >> in hearing your thoughts, and I'm more eager than ever to obtain a 64-bit >> iPhone so I can start using Alex there as well. My only complaint about Alex >> is that he doesn't speed up very well - sure, he can go crazy fast, but I >> find I miss things at more than 70% speaking rate. Anyway, what do you all >> think? If you haven't used Alex in a long time, give him another chance. If >> you use him all the time, have you noticed anything? >> >> -- >> Have a great day, >> Alex Hall >> [email protected] >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
