Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Yeah , His message was blank. saygilar sevgiler. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:03 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Your message was as void as outer space, other than your electronic signature. (grin) --- Shepherds are the best beasts! - Original Message - From: Ron Kolesar kolesar16...@roadrunner.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:56 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Ron Kolesar kolesar16...@roadrunner.com -- From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 3:08 PM To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, as I said earlier there are lots of alternatives to the Scansoft Real Speak voices, and most of them sound pretty good. Here is a few suggestions to check out. First, there is the ATT Natural Voices which happen to be sold through Nextup.com. I actually use Mike and Cristal a lot, and they are definitely some of the more human sounding voices out there. Next, there is the Swift 5 voices produced by Cepstral.com. Some of their voices like Callie and Diane actually sound pretty decent reading books from Bookshare etc. Even better yet they have 32-bit and 64-bit versions now, they have versions for Mac, Linux, and Windows and they seem to be open minded about supporting as many applications, screen readers, etc as possible. I don't think you can go wrong with any of their voices. There is the Ivona TTS voices sold by Ivona.com. These are probably the best sounding voices I've ever heard. They are a bit on the expensive side,$45.00 or so each, but they really sound human. I've been listening to a book read by one of their U.K. voices, Amy, and she sounds very human. Finally, there is the Cereproc voices Dark mentioned sold by Cereproc.com. I personally didn't care for their voices myself, but I do know some VI computer users/gamers like them. They are worth checking out as well. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: I think that's terrible, they're just out for the money these companies. I wish there was a way of me getting hold of a disk of jaws 8, but I don't know of anyone who has one and Mary isn't working so good, she sounds like she's got a sore throat, very crackley. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] scansoft voices
Well yes, must look into this, but urn, is this something to talk about? I mean, what I think about this whole thing is, why can MOTA not use SAPI5 voices instead of having prerecorded files with the voice already within them? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] scansoft voices
Hi Alfredo, Well, the primary reason I don't use Sapi 5 instead of prerecorded voices is because Microsoft Sapi is not Mac OS or Linux compatible. Linux and Mac OS have totally differen speech APIs of their own which is very different in design from Sapi. I've been trying for quite some time now to limit the amount of Windows specific APIs in the G3D engine, and if you look at the MOTA beta 19 road map you will see I've just about removed everything with Microsoft's name on it. For instance, as of the current unstable build I have replaced DirectInput with SDL input, I have completely removed the Win32 API and replaced it with SDL main, I have removed Microsoft Winsock and have replaced it with SDL net, and DirectSound is currently being replaced by FMOD Ex. The end result of all this updating, upgrading, etc is in the very very near future I should have cross-platform compatible versions of MOTA with the same features and ability as the Windows release. Since the new G3D engine will be based largely on open source APIs, rather than proprietary APIs like Sapi 5, I can simply change a few path variables etc and recompile the engine and the game for alternative platforms. HTH On 5/12/11, Alfredo_The_Music_maker birdlover2...@hotmail.com wrote: Well yes, must look into this, but urn, is this something to talk about? I mean, what I think about this whole thing is, why can MOTA not use SAPI5 voices instead of having prerecorded files with the voice already within them? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I think it is www.nextup.com HTH --- Shepherds are the best beasts! - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:39 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi could someone please send the link again where I can buy the scansoft voices from? I looked on the net but can't find the proper site. Thanks from Lori. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
HI Lori, Unfortunately, if you are talking about the Scansoft Real Speak voices that are Sapi 5 compatible those are no longer for sale. Currently the Scansoft Real Speak voices are designed as proprietary voices for Jaws, Text Aloud, GPS devices, etc and will only work with the specific product they were designed for. You can't just buy Scansoft Tom, Karen, etc and use it with a game or similar third-party product any more. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi could someone please send the link again where I can buy the scansoft voices from? I looked on the net but can't find the proper site. Thanks from Lori. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Uh oh. Did I blow it in my reply? --- Shepherds are the best beasts! - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:50 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices HI Lori, Unfortunately, if you are talking about the Scansoft Real Speak voices that are Sapi 5 compatible those are no longer for sale. Currently the Scansoft Real Speak voices are designed as proprietary voices for Jaws, Text Aloud, GPS devices, etc and will only work with the specific product they were designed for. You can't just buy Scansoft Tom, Karen, etc and use it with a game or similar third-party product any more. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi could someone please send the link again where I can buy the scansoft voices from? I looked on the net but can't find the proper site. Thanks from Lori. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Charles, No, the Scansoft voices Nextup.com sell are not Sapi 5 compatible. Those will work with, and only with, their products like Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, News Aloud, etc. There is no such thing as a generic Sapi 5 version of the Scansoft voices any more. For whatever reason Nuance has decided to change the way those voices are licensed and they are now sold with or designed for a specific product like Jaws, Text Aloud, etc and that means if you want to use Scansoft Tom, for instance, you have to buy a copy for each and every software product you use. You can't just buy a generic version of Tom and use it with everything any longer. Unfortunately, if someone wants a generic Sapi 5 version he/she has to obtain it illegally via a torrent etc. On 5/11/11, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: I think it is www.nextup.com HTH --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Charles, Yeah, I think you kind of did. Last time I checked the Nextup.com site all of the Scansoft voices they had for sale said specifically for use with Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, News Aloud, and so on. I wouldn't want someone to buy that version thinking they could use it with game x only to figure out it doesn't work because they aren't strictly speaking SAPI 5 voices, but are proprietary to those specific products. In fact, I made a similar mistake last year. I purchased Accapela Heather thinking I could use it with Window-Eyes, Jaws, as well as my games and e-mailed Nextup asking why it wasn't working. They explained I had purchased the version specifically designed for Text Aloud not a Sapi 5 version. I ended up having to pay quite a bit extra to get Accapela Heather v2.2 for Windows that wasn't proprietary. So now I am a lot more careful of what voices I buy from Nextup.com now and check if voice x is Text Aloud specific or is actually a SAPI 5 voice. Cheers! On 5/11/11, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: Uh oh. Did I blow it in my reply? --- Shepherds are the best beasts! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Charles it's ok, I'm just mad about these stuipd companies being so mean, all I want is a good voice :( I've tried Jaws again but sounds play faster even when I spead Jaws up too. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 5:53 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Uh oh. Did I blow it in my reply? --- Shepherds are the best beasts! - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:50 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices HI Lori, Unfortunately, if you are talking about the Scansoft Real Speak voices that are Sapi 5 compatible those are no longer for sale. Currently the Scansoft Real Speak voices are designed as proprietary voices for Jaws, Text Aloud, GPS devices, etc and will only work with the specific product they were designed for. You can't just buy Scansoft Tom, Karen, etc and use it with a game or similar third-party product any more. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi could someone please send the link again where I can buy the scansoft voices from? I looked on the net but can't find the proper site. Thanks from Lori. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Tom not sure how I'd do that, for one thing torrent sites don't seem very blind-friendly and for another thing I don't want to harm my computer. Maybe there's a jaws 8 cd on Ebey or someething I could find, will have to check it out. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 5:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Charles, No, the Scansoft voices Nextup.com sell are not Sapi 5 compatible. Those will work with, and only with, their products like Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, News Aloud, etc. There is no such thing as a generic Sapi 5 version of the Scansoft voices any more. For whatever reason Nuance has decided to change the way those voices are licensed and they are now sold with or designed for a specific product like Jaws, Text Aloud, etc and that means if you want to use Scansoft Tom, for instance, you have to buy a copy for each and every software product you use. You can't just buy a generic version of Tom and use it with everything any longer. Unfortunately, if someone wants a generic Sapi 5 version he/she has to obtain it illegally via a torrent etc. On 5/11/11, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: I think it is www.nextup.com HTH --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
actually the last time I tried them, they would install only if you had a nextup product, but would still be sapi5. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 6:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Charles, No, the Scansoft voices Nextup.com sell are not Sapi 5 compatible. Those will work with, and only with, their products like Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, News Aloud, etc. There is no such thing as a generic Sapi 5 version of the Scansoft voices any more. For whatever reason Nuance has decided to change the way those voices are licensed and they are now sold with or designed for a specific product like Jaws, Text Aloud, etc and that means if you want to use Scansoft Tom, for instance, you have to buy a copy for each and every software product you use. You can't just buy a generic version of Tom and use it with everything any longer. Unfortunately, if someone wants a generic Sapi 5 version he/she has to obtain it illegally via a torrent etc. On 5/11/11, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: I think it is www.nextup.com HTH --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5266 (20100709) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5266 (20100709) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Lori. Yes, scansoft is a pain, and I will confess that I won't be changing my older, but stil sapi complient version of daniel any time soon. however I can recommend http://www.cereproc.com/home They have some great human sounding voices that are advertized as useable with sapi, and should be a really useful alternative to the mean people at nextup. Beware the grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 7:08 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Charles it's ok, I'm just mad about these stuipd companies being so mean, all I want is a good voice :( I've tried Jaws again but sounds play faster even when I spead Jaws up too. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 5:53 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Uh oh. Did I blow it in my reply? --- Shepherds are the best beasts! - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:50 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices HI Lori, Unfortunately, if you are talking about the Scansoft Real Speak voices that are Sapi 5 compatible those are no longer for sale. Currently the Scansoft Real Speak voices are designed as proprietary voices for Jaws, Text Aloud, GPS devices, etc and will only work with the specific product they were designed for. You can't just buy Scansoft Tom, Karen, etc and use it with a game or similar third-party product any more. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi could someone please send the link again where I can buy the scansoft voices from? I looked on the net but can't find the proper site. Thanks from Lori. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
That's what I have here. I have text aloud and a copy of scansoft daniel, though I really only use it for the voice. Beware the grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Pitermach piterm...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 7:26 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices actually the last time I tried them, they would install only if you had a nextup product, but would still be sapi5. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 6:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Charles, No, the Scansoft voices Nextup.com sell are not Sapi 5 compatible. Those will work with, and only with, their products like Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, News Aloud, etc. There is no such thing as a generic Sapi 5 version of the Scansoft voices any more. For whatever reason Nuance has decided to change the way those voices are licensed and they are now sold with or designed for a specific product like Jaws, Text Aloud, etc and that means if you want to use Scansoft Tom, for instance, you have to buy a copy for each and every software product you use. You can't just buy a generic version of Tom and use it with everything any longer. Unfortunately, if someone wants a generic Sapi 5 version he/she has to obtain it illegally via a torrent etc. On 5/11/11, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: I think it is www.nextup.com HTH --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5266 (20100709) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5266 (20100709) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Dark, Why are you blaming Nextup.com? They don't make the Scansoft voices. So I don't know why you are calling them mean. If you want to blame someone blame the developer, Nuance, who produces the voices. As far as good voices I would also suggest cepstral.com who have decent voices for Mac, Linux, and Windows and are actually aware that screen readers exist and try to support as many products and platforms as possible. You might also want to look at the Ivona voices I think Ivona.com who has some of the best Sapi voices on the market right now. I know I have a couple of their voices and they are excellent. On 5/11/11, dark d...@xgam.org wrote: Hi Lori. Yes, scansoft is a pain, and I will confess that I won't be changing my older, but stil sapi complient version of daniel any time soon. however I can recommend http://www.cereproc.com/home They have some great human sounding voices that are advertized as useable with sapi, and should be a really useful alternative to the mean people at nextup. Beware the grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Lori, I can tell by the nature of your post that you aren't familiar with torrents, but they aren't as bad as you make them out to be. What you do is download a *.torrent file and open it in a torrent client. For instance, on Linux I use a program called Bitstormlite and it downloads the program, book, etc to my computer. In all the years I've used torrents I haven't had anything major happen to my computer. One time I did get a bad torrent with a virus in it, but Avast killed it before it did any harm. Now, that I'm using Linux most of the time Windows viruses etc are even less of a worry. However, if you have Jaws 8, Jaws 9, or Openbook 8, etc you can get the Sapi 5 voices as they shipped that way before Nuance decided to get greedy and screw their customers. Cheers! On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Tom not sure how I'd do that, for one thing torrent sites don't seem very blind-friendly and for another thing I don't want to harm my computer. Maybe there's a jaws 8 cd on Ebey or someething I could find, will have to check it out. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi, Actually, if you go directly to the Ivona site and fill out a download form you can get a 30 unlimited day trial of any voice or voices you want. I've hooked up a client with a 30 day trial of one of the Ivona voices and he loves it. They are, admitedly, pretty human sounding. On 5/11/11, dark d...@xgam.org wrote: Ah, fair enough, I meant the makers of the voices, if nextup is a reseller then admittedly it's not their fault. I believe you can try the ivona voices on Klango for free, so that might be a way of checking things out. Beware the grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Ah, fair enough, I meant the makers of the voices, if nextup is a reseller then admittedly it's not their fault. I believe you can try the ivona voices on Klango for free, so that might be a way of checking things out. Beware the grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Lori, Well, as I said earlier there are lots of alternatives to the Scansoft Real Speak voices, and most of them sound pretty good. Here is a few suggestions to check out. First, there is the ATT Natural Voices which happen to be sold through Nextup.com. I actually use Mike and Cristal a lot, and they are definitely some of the more human sounding voices out there. Next, there is the Swift 5 voices produced by Cepstral.com. Some of their voices like Callie and Diane actually sound pretty decent reading books from Bookshare etc. Even better yet they have 32-bit and 64-bit versions now, they have versions for Mac, Linux, and Windows and they seem to be open minded about supporting as many applications, screen readers, etc as possible. I don't think you can go wrong with any of their voices. There is the Ivona TTS voices sold by Ivona.com. These are probably the best sounding voices I've ever heard. They are a bit on the expensive side,$45.00 or so each, but they really sound human. I've been listening to a book read by one of their U.K. voices, Amy, and she sounds very human. Finally, there is the Cereproc voices Dark mentioned sold by Cereproc.com. I personally didn't care for their voices myself, but I do know some VI computer users/gamers like them. They are worth checking out as well. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: I think that's terrible, they're just out for the money these companies. I wish there was a way of me getting hold of a disk of jaws 8, but I don't know of anyone who has one and Mary isn't working so good, she sounds like she's got a sore throat, very crackley. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Ron Kolesar kolesar16...@roadrunner.com -- From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 3:08 PM To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, as I said earlier there are lots of alternatives to the Scansoft Real Speak voices, and most of them sound pretty good. Here is a few suggestions to check out. First, there is the ATT Natural Voices which happen to be sold through Nextup.com. I actually use Mike and Cristal a lot, and they are definitely some of the more human sounding voices out there. Next, there is the Swift 5 voices produced by Cepstral.com. Some of their voices like Callie and Diane actually sound pretty decent reading books from Bookshare etc. Even better yet they have 32-bit and 64-bit versions now, they have versions for Mac, Linux, and Windows and they seem to be open minded about supporting as many applications, screen readers, etc as possible. I don't think you can go wrong with any of their voices. There is the Ivona TTS voices sold by Ivona.com. These are probably the best sounding voices I've ever heard. They are a bit on the expensive side,$45.00 or so each, but they really sound human. I've been listening to a book read by one of their U.K. voices, Amy, and she sounds very human. Finally, there is the Cereproc voices Dark mentioned sold by Cereproc.com. I personally didn't care for their voices myself, but I do know some VI computer users/gamers like them. They are worth checking out as well. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: I think that's terrible, they're just out for the money these companies. I wish there was a way of me getting hold of a disk of jaws 8, but I don't know of anyone who has one and Mary isn't working so good, she sounds like she's got a sore throat, very crackley. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Your message was as void as outer space, other than your electronic signature. (grin) --- Shepherds are the best beasts! - Original Message - From: Ron Kolesar kolesar16...@roadrunner.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:56 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Ron Kolesar kolesar16...@roadrunner.com -- From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 3:08 PM To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, as I said earlier there are lots of alternatives to the Scansoft Real Speak voices, and most of them sound pretty good. Here is a few suggestions to check out. First, there is the ATT Natural Voices which happen to be sold through Nextup.com. I actually use Mike and Cristal a lot, and they are definitely some of the more human sounding voices out there. Next, there is the Swift 5 voices produced by Cepstral.com. Some of their voices like Callie and Diane actually sound pretty decent reading books from Bookshare etc. Even better yet they have 32-bit and 64-bit versions now, they have versions for Mac, Linux, and Windows and they seem to be open minded about supporting as many applications, screen readers, etc as possible. I don't think you can go wrong with any of their voices. There is the Ivona TTS voices sold by Ivona.com. These are probably the best sounding voices I've ever heard. They are a bit on the expensive side,$45.00 or so each, but they really sound human. I've been listening to a book read by one of their U.K. voices, Amy, and she sounds very human. Finally, there is the Cereproc voices Dark mentioned sold by Cereproc.com. I personally didn't care for their voices myself, but I do know some VI computer users/gamers like them. They are worth checking out as well. HTH On 5/11/11, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: I think that's terrible, they're just out for the money these companies. I wish there was a way of me getting hold of a disk of jaws 8, but I don't know of anyone who has one and Mary isn't working so good, she sounds like she's got a sore throat, very crackley. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Hayden, Yeah. Office 2010 is currently in beta testing. However, that topic is off topic for the list, and so I shall not discuss it here. HTH On 5/13/10, Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com wrote: HI, The only upside I can think for ribbons is that you don't have to worry about toolbars. By the way, does anyone know something about office 2010? Best Regards, Haden --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi, Ah, got it. I'll just do some looking--shouldn't be hard. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 3:55 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Hayden, Yeah. Office 2010 is currently in beta testing. However, that topic is off topic for the list, and so I shall not discuss it here. HTH On 5/13/10, Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com wrote: HI, The only upside I can think for ribbons is that you don't have to worry about toolbars. By the way, does anyone know something about office 2010? Best Regards, Haden --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I was rather amused at their arnold shwatzanega voice, having the Governator as a synth voice would be most amusing. I would be interested actually bryan to know how they hanbdle abbreviations, sinse that's one thing that does rather get on my whick with realspeak daniel, - especially in vip mud, though the idea of manuscript sapi is rather amusing. If they do handle such things okay I might well considder switching myself. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 1:04 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Charles, Thanks. I truly appreciate that. However, it really all comes down to a fundimental difference in goals here. When I started USA Games I had no desires to make millions in sales, to be a ritch fat cat, and always have done my best to treat my customers as real people instead of just a consumer. Part of that comes from the fact I mainly write these games as a hobby, for fun, and only want to make a little extra money to keep the company going and to pay for a few things I may need personally. The other reason is that I was raised to believe in the motto to treat others as you would have them treat you type outlook on life. Of course, I slip sometimes, certainly am not perfect, but as a whole I don't believe in treating people unfairly or unjustly just to turn an extra buck or two. I am not so far above the rest of the members on this list that I can't understand their own needs, wants, desires, and often have the same problems they do with mainstream society. Therefore I am in touch with my customers on a personal level, and can not treat them as worthless peons. With a company like Microsoft the people who have a controling interest in the company such as Bill Gates and Stephen Jobs are making millions of dollars daily. Not yearly, but on a daily basis. It is so much wealth it is obscene. Even when they donate some of that wealth to donations they get huge tax breaks, and just make it back in a few days anyway. So the fact they are making that kind of money and continue to do so really makes you wonder if money is the one and only thing they think about. Now, how are they making that kind of money? Of course, the answer is simple. They charge a lot for the software, far more than they need to, and use restrictive licensing like you must properly license a copy of Windows for each and every computer you own. So if you have 10 computers in your office you must purchase a total of 10 licenses of Windows for those systems when one license should be enough. They do offer discounts for large numbers of site licenses, but it still gets to be pretty expensive. If that wasn't enough Microsoft charges for tech support. So depending on your level of tech support needs you could be running up your credit card getting help from them on Windows 7, Office 2007, Microsoft money, whatever. So the lack of frree technical support means whatever you buy from them will cost even more money if you need technical support. If you are a game developer and you happen to want to support their XBox 360 console prepare to pay for it through the nose. You have to purchase the XBox version of the XNA Studio, pay royalties to use the XBox which runs into the thousands, and even after all that MGS, Microsoft Game Studios, must approve your title before they will allow you to redistribute it commercially for their platform. As with Sony's Play Station the XBox is well out of the financial range of a small time developer like me. They are probably making millions off of that platform from third-party developers, and I can't pay that kind of fee. So when you really come down to it most of their customers are just peons. A bunch of nameless, faceless, customers who just happen to be handing Microsoft money hand over fist. As long as that kind of money keeps coming in it is just business as usual. Worse they constantly try and find ways to cut an even larger part of the market without too much expense. It is easy for them to say, who cares about the individual when they have millions and don't know the person or need his/her money? Cheers! On 5/12/10, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: These corporations treat their call center employees the same as they treat the competition and the customer. It's a dog eat dog corporate war, and the American people are the dog food. At the credit card call center I used to work at, the management always said that the employee is the backbone of our company, and we responded, Then quit breaking your back! They said that we have to look at the big picture; the entire window. We pointed out that a lot of big pictures are, after all, comprised of very small pieces that make the whole stronger, so how about taking care to retain that strength by taking good care of those little pieces? Tom: As far as USA Games Entertainment goes, thanks for taking care of the little pieces; the customers. Keeping us up to date on the current development of your games, keeping contact in a personal way as far as answering questions, and continuing to work on games that weren't even yours to begin with. How's that for a way to get from politics back to gaming? By the way, I didn't throw that in just to get back on topic. I meant it. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Charles, Me too. I'm not exactly a big fan of the ribbons either, but that's the way things are with all of Microsoft's new products. Plus several other companies are beginning to go that way too. So like I said I think it is something we will have to get use to sooner or later. It isn't exactly going to go back to the classic XP look and feel we know and like. On 5/12/10, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: I wish the pulldown menus would return. I hate ribbons. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Lol that's why I'd love a game with blind people incharge of sighted, with commands for sighted like Follow stop or search, like commanding your friendly tanks. I like the US attitude to disability, in the UK it's hard sometimes to be taken seriously when you say to a sighted computer games developer have you ever thought of games for the blind. A lot of them are still in the dark ages of word type games or braile cards, although I realise some blind people still like them. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 12:31 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I will confess that while I do admire the Us atitudes on disability, this is something I like a good deal less, though I freely admit I'm rather leaning leftwards myself. Saying that, the english government (or excuse for such we have at the moment), can't really claime to be too much bettter when their privatizing national contracts and services like nobody's business. But before I turn this into a left wing liberal wrant I'll stop. Beware the grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:47 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, if we are really honest about it though companies like Microsoft and Nuance are out to rip everyone off. The more and more I look around my country, the United States, I've found myself living in a corperation owned state were it is a dog eat dog world. Every major corperation and bank has the attitude it is their God given right to rip everyone off and not pay for it. When the government handed over a 750 billion dollar bale out plan to Wall Street big wigs like City Group, Goldman and Sax, Bank of America, and A.I.G. they pretty much said in effect who our government cares about, and it certainly was not the working middle class and the average American tax payer. Now, do we really expect our current president to help stop the curuption when Obama's number one financial backer was Goldman and Sax, and some of the very same crooks that got us into this mess do to their subprime lending crap? Sigh...I didn't mean to bring politics into this discussion, but I did want to make the point that companies here in the United States are pretty cutthroat. They'll cut anyone's throat if it will make them an extra buck or two. You and I are peons in the eyes of these corperations. What do they care when their C.E.O. is making a million bucks a day in some cases. The greed of these crooks makes you want to scream doesn't it? - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Lol give me Paul Mcgann any day, or Andrew Sachs, Alex Jennings, Jim Dale. - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 1:04 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Where could I get one? Anyone care to sell me one? Please? :( - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 2:59 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I use them for other applications as well. I'm keeping that CD! - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:45 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices HI Thomas, That's exactly why I have to keep the JAWS 9 CD around. I don't use the Scansoft voices often, but I always use them with Jim's games as well as RailRacer. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:43 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Especially if you make a spelling mistake. - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 5:03 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Actually the voice i'd really like to see as a screen reader voice would have to be either Homer Simpson or Ned Flanders. Now that would be funny. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:54 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Brian, Awww...you don't like politics? I love it, and if Obama was deleted I wouldn't cry...but I digress. That would be funny. Could you imagine him in entombed, announcing that Alissa had cast ra of destrucution? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Peterson Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:24 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm no supporter of his either. That's why I think it'd be funny to use him in my screen reader. He could do soemthing useful for a change. But I'll shut up now lest I draw the discussion to actual politics, a subject which I generally hate with a burning, fiery passion. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices That would one voice that I would immediately delete! I would like to see the person deleted from our Presidency, too! - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Well yeah, the CD that they lent me was Barnets CD. Well actually, my teacher has the real speek CD and I have a gang of the voices installed. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Hayden Presley Sent: 13 May 2010 02:46 To: 'Gamers Discussion list' Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices HI Thomas, That's exactly why I have to keep the JAWS 9 CD around. I don't use the Scansoft voices often, but I always use them with Jim's games as well as RailRacer. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:43 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
My teacher likes it when I use the cain. And I managed to learn how to get in step with the push and drag technique. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Hayden Presley Sent: 13 May 2010 02:31 To: 'Gamers Discussion list' Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi, Lol...I use to always get the so the cane helps you see?. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Peterson Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 3:24 PM To: Lori Duncan; Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Rail Racer did sort of explore that territory actually. Personally my idea was more along the lines of a blind version of The Simpsons where the blind folks would be more the Lisa types while the sighties would be more like Bart and Homer. Of course that wouldn't be entirely fair to the ones who recently lost their sight, since however much the sighted community might get things wrong where we're concerned they do deserve at least some compassion. But a blind protagonist isn't out of the question in some of my games, and not just having to do with blindness. Maybe I'll parody the misconception some sighted folks have that we're gifted with superpowers. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:43 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Lol! -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Hayden Presley Sent: 13 May 2010 01:54 To: 'Gamers Discussion list' Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Brian, Awww...you don't like politics? I love it, and if Obama was deleted I wouldn't cry...but I digress. That would be funny. Could you imagine him in entombed, announcing that Alissa had cast ra of destrucution? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Peterson Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:24 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm no supporter of his either. That's why I think it'd be funny to use him in my screen reader. He could do soemthing useful for a change. But I'll shut up now lest I draw the discussion to actual politics, a subject which I generally hate with a burning, fiery passion. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices That would one voice that I would immediately delete! I would like to see the person deleted from our Presidency, too! - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
HI, The only upside I can think for ribbons is that you don't have to worry about toolbars. By the way, does anyone know something about office 2010? Best Regards, Haden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 7:22 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Charles, Me too. I'm not exactly a big fan of the ribbons either, but that's the way things are with all of Microsoft's new products. Plus several other companies are beginning to go that way too. So like I said I think it is something we will have to get use to sooner or later. It isn't exactly going to go back to the classic XP look and feel we know and like. On 5/12/10, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: I wish the pulldown menus would return. I hate ribbons. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Thomas, Abou what you said about Microsoft...exactly. Just recently, Microsoft put up an upgrade to outlook connecter that you had to get if you wanted to continue using hotmail via outlook, which is what I do. Well, you download the thing, and it will not install. I wasn't the only one having this problem, and people were complaining all over the Microsoft site over it. I was looking for Microsoft Office Outlook connecter, but no...it was Microsoft Office Hotmail Connecter that you had to download. Not exactly the same scenario I grant you, but close enough--I don't see any new benefits to this version of outlook connecter over the previous one. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 7:00 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Charles, Thanks. I truly appreciate that. However, it really all comes down to a fundimental difference in goals here. When I started USA Games I had no desires to make millions in sales, to be a ritch fat cat, and always have done my best to treat my customers as real people instead of just a consumer. Part of that comes from the fact I mainly write these games as a hobby, for fun, and only want to make a little extra money to keep the company going and to pay for a few things I may need personally. The other reason is that I was raised to believe in the motto to treat others as you would have them treat you type outlook on life. Of course, I slip sometimes, certainly am not perfect, but as a whole I don't believe in treating people unfairly or unjustly just to turn an extra buck or two. I am not so far above the rest of the members on this list that I can't understand their own needs, wants, desires, and often have the same problems they do with mainstream society. Therefore I am in touch with my customers on a personal level, and can not treat them as worthless peons. With a company like Microsoft the people who have a controling interest in the company such as Bill Gates and Stephen Jobs are making millions of dollars daily. Not yearly, but on a daily basis. It is so much wealth it is obscene. Even when they donate some of that wealth to donations they get huge tax breaks, and just make it back in a few days anyway. So the fact they are making that kind of money and continue to do so really makes you wonder if money is the one and only thing they think about. Now, how are they making that kind of money? Of course, the answer is simple. They charge a lot for the software, far more than they need to, and use restrictive licensing like you must properly license a copy of Windows for each and every computer you own. So if you have 10 computers in your office you must purchase a total of 10 licenses of Windows for those systems when one license should be enough. They do offer discounts for large numbers of site licenses, but it still gets to be pretty expensive. If that wasn't enough Microsoft charges for tech support. So depending on your level of tech support needs you could be running up your credit card getting help from them on Windows 7, Office 2007, Microsoft money, whatever. So the lack of frree technical support means whatever you buy from them will cost even more money if you need technical support. If you are a game developer and you happen to want to support their XBox 360 console prepare to pay for it through the nose. You have to purchase the XBox version of the XNA Studio, pay royalties to use the XBox which runs into the thousands, and even after all that MGS, Microsoft Game Studios, must approve your title before they will allow you to redistribute it commercially for their platform. As with Sony's Play Station the XBox is well out of the financial range of a small time developer like me. They are probably making millions off of that platform from third-party developers, and I can't pay that kind of fee. So when you really come down to it most of their customers are just peons. A bunch of nameless, faceless, customers who just happen to be handing Microsoft money hand over fist. As long as that kind of money keeps coming in it is just business as usual. Worse they constantly try and find ways to cut an even larger part of the market without too much expense. It is easy for them to say, who cares about the individual when they have millions and don't know the person or need his/her money? Cheers! On 5/12/10, Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net wrote: These corporations treat their call center employees the same as they treat the competition and the customer. It's a dog eat dog corporate war, and the American people are the dog food. At the credit card call center I used to work at, the management always said that the employee is the backbone of our company, and we responded, Then quit breaking your back! They said that we have to look at the big picture; the entire window
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
The only place I know of is www.nextup.com. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:54 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi, I'd highly recommend that you don't buy the Scansoft Real Speak voices from Nextup.com and here is why. As I understand it a while backNuance, the company that owns Scansoft, has changed the way it licences its Real Speak voices. Under the new licensing scheme the products must be purchased by a company and then locked specifically to that product. In other words if you buy Scansoft Karen, Tom, whatever from Nextup.com those will only work with Nextup.com's products such as Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, and News Aloud. You can not turn around and use it with Window-Eyes, Jaws, or your favorite game by Jim Kitchen, because they are no longer, strictly speaking, Sapi voices. They must be accessed using a specific product, and only that specific product through a special license. So if you want to use Scansoft Tom, Daniel, Karen, etc with Jaws 11 you must license the voice through Freedom Scientific for Jaws. If you want to use those voices with Text Aloud you have to turn around and license a copy of those voices through Nextup.com specifically for that product. In short, those voices are going to cost you dearly to have, and I am vvery glad that I managed to purchase those voices when Jaws 8 and Openbook 8 came out when they were still Sapi voices and not under the new more restrictive license. I hate to say it, but at this point I don't know of any legal way to get the older Sapi 5 voices without resorting to outright piracy, and it seams to me to be the logical result of this kind of radical, money grabbing, greedy, unfair change in licensing. Normally I don't advocate software piracy, but when a company makes this kind of idiotic polacy I don't feel a bit sorry if it happens to them. It is one thing to charge once for a product that you can use with most of your software, but quite another when the license basically forces you to purchase a copy for each and every product you intend to use it with. This is criminal in my book, and the company does not deserve any mor of our business until they shape up and change their polacy. I could be wrong about all this, but it seams odd to me that the Scansoft and Nuance web sites no longer have the Real Speak voices for sale on their web site like the use to. When I check Nextup.com they say right on the web site that these voices will only work with Nextup.com products. Go to Freedom Scientific, guess what, all of the new Scansoft voice downloads only work with Jaws and not anything else. So what is really going on here? On 5/12/10, Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net wrote: The only place I know of is www.nextup.com. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
You're right Tomas, thanks for that I was outraged before about the prices! I wasn't going to pay 32£ odds for a voice which I can easilly access through Jaws. As I see it companies take advantage of their customers, if we buy a product we pay the money therefore it should be up to us what we do with it. On the other hand Microsoft should be giving out better Sappi voices, because even Microsoft Mary is starting to get on my nerves! I know they have a new Anna voice with windows 7, but I don't know if upgrading would do me any good, for example will it mess up my windows xp interface, start menus etc. For another will my audio games be harmed in any way? - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:22 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi, I'd highly recommend that you don't buy the Scansoft Real Speak voices from Nextup.com and here is why. As I understand it a while backNuance, the company that owns Scansoft, has changed the way it licences its Real Speak voices. Under the new licensing scheme the products must be purchased by a company and then locked specifically to that product. In other words if you buy Scansoft Karen, Tom, whatever from Nextup.com those will only work with Nextup.com's products such as Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, and News Aloud. You can not turn around and use it with Window-Eyes, Jaws, or your favorite game by Jim Kitchen, because they are no longer, strictly speaking, Sapi voices. They must be accessed using a specific product, and only that specific product through a special license. So if you want to use Scansoft Tom, Daniel, Karen, etc with Jaws 11 you must license the voice through Freedom Scientific for Jaws. If you want to use those voices with Text Aloud you have to turn around and license a copy of those voices through Nextup.com specifically for that product. In short, those voices are going to cost you dearly to have, and I am vvery glad that I managed to purchase those voices when Jaws 8 and Openbook 8 came out when they were still Sapi voices and not under the new more restrictive license. I hate to say it, but at this point I don't know of any legal way to get the older Sapi 5 voices without resorting to outright piracy, and it seams to me to be the logical result of this kind of radical, money grabbing, greedy, unfair change in licensing. Normally I don't advocate software piracy, but when a company makes this kind of idiotic polacy I don't feel a bit sorry if it happens to them. It is one thing to charge once for a product that you can use with most of your software, but quite another when the license basically forces you to purchase a copy for each and every product you intend to use it with. This is criminal in my book, and the company does not deserve any mor of our business until they shape up and change their polacy. I could be wrong about all this, but it seams odd to me that the Scansoft and Nuance web sites no longer have the Real Speak voices for sale on their web site like the use to. When I check Nextup.com they say right on the web site that these voices will only work with Nextup.com products. Go to Freedom Scientific, guess what, all of the new Scansoft voice downloads only work with Jaws and not anything else. So what is really going on here? On 5/12/10, Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net wrote: The only place I know of is www.nextup.com. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
It's lucky I bought them a few years back when they were still usable as such, and lucky that I saved those installs. True you can only install them if Text Aloud is on your machine but they work with WIndow-Eyes and other aps. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 12:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 12 May 2010 19:33 To: Lori Duncan; Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Lori, Yes, you are right that Windows 7 does have a better Sapi voice called Anna. It is better than Mike, Mary, and Sam. However, it still isn't as good as the Scansoft Real Speak voices or the ATT Natural voices in my opinion. So even though I own Windows 7 I don't really use Anna much myself because I own better quality voices, but for a free voice it is pretty good. As for the Windows 7 interface it builds a lot upon changes introduced in Windows Vista, and is quite a bit different from Windows XP. If you haven't used Windows Vista prier to upgrading to Windows 7 then many of the changes will come as a surprise to you as things are somewhat different now. For example, when you bring up the start menu instead of a single menu or list the screen is split into columns with your frequently used programs, search field, all programs menu, etc on one side of the screen and your user directory, documents, control panel, etc on the other. It isn't difficult to navigate, but you will have to explore the new start menu some to figure out where things are. You may have to go into the start menu properties to turn some things on/off such as the run command if you want it. Another change is the old menu bars seen in older versions of Windows such as XP are pretty much a thing of the past. Now, the old menu bars have been replaced by the menu ribbins like those in Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft 2010. A lot of Microsoft's products are going that way, and that is the new look and feel you might say for all future software so you might as well get use to menu ribbins sooner or later. Another important change you'll have to get use to is a lot of the Windows 7 windows are integrated into Explorer, and have a web view look and feel to them. For example, if you click on control panel by default it will show up as a web page with links to click on to change security settings, user accounts, preferences, programs and features, etc. Way different from the control panel you know and love from XP that's for sure. I believe in some cases you can change it back to the XP look and feel, but in many of the cases you are stuck with the new look and feel. So bottom line if you come at Windows 7 expecting a newer version of XP forget it. Windows 7 is a whole new ball game, and needs to be treated as the new operating system that it is. Even Vista doesn't quite compare to Windows 7 because Microsoft majorly over halled the operating system removing several things that were in Vista to make it faster, more stable, support a wider range of hardware, etc while living up to being the first solid Windows operating system since XP. I'm quite happy with it, and don't mind leaving Xp behind. Finally, as for your audio games there are a few issues you need to be aware of, but in most cases they are easily fixed. One major issue is that most of the audio games out there from Draconis, L-Works, GMA, Kitchens Inc, etc were all written in Visual Basic 6 which is no longer officially supported on Windows 7. There is, however, an easy solution to the problem. If you download and install Jim Kitchens Winkit setup you will get the complete Visual Basic 6 runtime library and DirectX libraries which restores support on Windows 7 for Visual Basic applications. This means if you do that you should be able to run most of your pre-Windows 7 games without too much problem. Another issue is that Windows 7's security polacies have changed. Unfortunately, most game developers have not yet gotten around to rewriting or updating their software to properly support Windows 7's User Account Control security system. It is often responcibile for effecting the operation of several old games. One way to resolve this problem in the mean time is to disable UAC support on Windows 7. It will increase the risk of viruses and other malware, but on the other hand does resolve many compatibility issues with games and other older applications designed for Windows XP and earlier. Personally, I think that having UAC on provides a better layer of protection, but if you want to disable it to support older applications then it can be done. HTH On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: You're right Thomas, thanks for that I was outraged before about the prices! I wasn't going to pay 32£ odds for a voice which I can easilly access through Jaws. As I see it companies take advantage of their customers, if we buy a product we pay the money therefore it should be up to us what we do with it. On the other hand Microsoft should be giving out better Sappi voices, because even Microsoft Mary is starting to get on my nerves! I know they have a new Anna voice with windows 7, but I don't know if upgrading would do me any good, for example will it mess up my windows xp interface, start menus etc. For another will my audio games be harmed in any way? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:43 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I'll say this much. At least Anna doesn't sound terminally depressed the way Sam does. Makes me wish I still had the parody file I created a few years ago where Sam committed suicide. Maybe I'll ask my friend Marissa if she's still got a copy... He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:35 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Yes, you are right that Windows 7 does have a better Sapi voice called Anna. It is better than Mike, Mary, and Sam. However, it still isn't as good as the Scansoft Real Speak voices or the ATT Natural voices in my opinion. So even though I own Windows 7 I don't really use Anna much myself because I own better quality voices, but for a free voice it is pretty good. As for the Windows 7 interface it builds a lot upon changes introduced in Windows Vista, and is quite a bit different from Windows XP. If you haven't used Windows Vista prier to upgrading to Windows 7 then many of the changes will come as a surprise to you as things are somewhat different now. For example, when you bring up the start menu instead of a single menu or list the screen is split into columns with your frequently used programs, search field, all programs menu, etc on one side of the screen and your user directory, documents, control panel, etc on the other. It isn't difficult to navigate, but you will have to explore the new start menu some to figure out where things are. You may have to go into the start menu properties to turn some things on/off such as the run command if you want it. Another change is the old menu bars seen in older versions of Windows such as XP are pretty much a thing of the past. Now, the old menu bars have been replaced by the menu ribbins like those in Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft 2010. A lot of Microsoft's products are going that way, and that is the new look and feel you might say for all future software so you might as well get use to menu ribbins sooner or later. Another important change you'll have to get use to is a lot of the Windows 7 windows are integrated into Explorer, and have a web view look and feel to them. For example, if you click on control panel by default it will show up as a web page with links to click on to change security settings, user accounts, preferences, programs and features, etc. Way different from the control panel you know and love from XP that's for sure. I believe in some cases you can change it back to the XP look and feel, but in many of the cases you are stuck with the new look and feel. So bottom line if you come at Windows 7 expecting a newer version of XP forget it. Windows 7 is a whole new ball game, and needs to be treated as the new operating system that it is. Even Vista doesn't quite compare to Windows 7 because Microsoft majorly over halled the operating system removing several things that were in Vista to make it faster, more stable, support a wider range of hardware, etc while living up to being the first solid Windows operating system since XP. I'm quite happy with it, and don't mind leaving Xp behind. Finally, as for your audio games there are a few issues you need to be aware of, but in most cases they are easily fixed. One major issue is that most of the audio games out there from Draconis, L-Works, GMA, Kitchens Inc, etc were all written in Visual Basic 6 which is no longer officially supported on Windows 7. There is, however, an easy solution to the problem. If you download and install Jim Kitchens Winkit setup you will get the complete Visual Basic 6 runtime library and DirectX libraries which restores support on Windows 7 for Visual Basic applications. This means if you do that you should be able to run most of your pre-Windows 7 games without too much problem. Another issue is that Windows 7's security polacies have changed. Unfortunately, most game developers have not yet gotten around to rewriting or updating their software to properly support Windows 7's User Account Control security system. It is often responcibile for effecting the operation of several old games. One way to resolve this problem in the mean time is to disable UAC support on Windows 7. It will increase the risk of viruses and other malware, but on the other hand does resolve many compatibility issues with games and other older applications designed for Windows XP and earlier. Personally, I think that having UAC on provides a better layer of protection, but if you want to disable it to support older applications then it can be done. HTH On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: You're right Thomas, thanks for that I was outraged before about the prices! I wasn't going to pay 32£ odds for a voice which I can easilly access through Jaws. As I see it companies take advantage
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Exactly. This summer, July if I'm not mistaken, will mark three years ago that I finally made the switch to Window-Eyes, which I wouldn't have managed if it hadn't been for their payment plan. Well at least I can still use NeoSpeech Kate and Paul. They may have a few pronunciation issues but they're definitely great for when I want a break from Eloquence. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:43 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Rail Racer did sort of explore that territory actually. Personally my idea was more along the lines of a blind version of The Simpsons where the blind folks would be more the Lisa types while the sighties would be more like Bart and Homer. Of course that wouldn't be entirely fair to the ones who recently lost their sight, since however much the sighted community might get things wrong where we're concerned they do deserve at least some compassion. But a blind protagonist isn't out of the question in some of my games, and not just having to do with blindness. Maybe I'll parody the misconception some sighted folks have that we're gifted with superpowers. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:43 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Lori, Well, if we are really honest about it though companies like Microsoft and Nuance are out to rip everyone off. The more and more I look around my country, the United States, I've found myself living in a corperation owned state were it is a dog eat dog world. Every major corperation and bank has the attitude it is their God given right to rip everyone off and not pay for it. When the government handed over a 750 billion dollar bale out plan to Wall Street big wigs like City Group, Goldman and Sax, Bank of America, and A.I.G. they pretty much said in effect who our government cares about, and it certainly was not the working middle class and the average American tax payer. Now, do we really expect our current president to help stop the curuption when Obama's number one financial backer was Goldman and Sax, and some of the very same crooks that got us into this mess do to their subprime lending crap? Sigh...I didn't mean to bring politics into this discussion, but I did want to make the point that companies here in the United States are pretty cutthroat. They'll cut anyone's throat if it will make them an extra buck or two. You and I are peons in the eyes of these corperations. What do they care when their C.E.O. is making a million bucks a day in some cases. The greed of these crooks makes you want to scream doesn't it? - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Lol would love to hear that one! They should play it in prisons to make people confess to wrong doings, have Sam read a long political document lasting 10 hours and see the result. Smile - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:18 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'll say this much. At least Anna doesn't sound terminally depressed the way Sam does. Makes me wish I still had the parody file I created a few years ago where Sam committed suicide. Maybe I'll ask my friend Marissa if she's still got a copy... He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:35 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Yes, you are right that Windows 7 does have a better Sapi voice called Anna. It is better than Mike, Mary, and Sam. However, it still isn't as good as the Scansoft Real Speak voices or the ATT Natural voices in my opinion. So even though I own Windows 7 I don't really use Anna much myself because I own better quality voices, but for a free voice it is pretty good. As for the Windows 7 interface it builds a lot upon changes introduced in Windows Vista, and is quite a bit different from Windows XP. If you haven't used Windows Vista prier to upgrading to Windows 7 then many of the changes will come as a surprise to you as things are somewhat different now. For example, when you bring up the start menu instead of a single menu or list the screen is split into columns with your frequently used programs, search field, all programs menu, etc on one side of the screen and your user directory, documents, control panel, etc on the other. It isn't difficult to navigate, but you will have to explore the new start menu some to figure out where things are. You may have to go into the start menu properties to turn some things on/off such as the run command if you want it. Another change is the old menu bars seen in older versions of Windows such as XP are pretty much a thing of the past. Now, the old menu bars have been replaced by the menu ribbins like those in Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft 2010. A lot of Microsoft's products are going that way, and that is the new look and feel you might say for all future software so you might as well get use to menu ribbins sooner or later. Another important change you'll have to get use to is a lot of the Windows 7 windows are integrated into Explorer, and have a web view look and feel to them. For example, if you click on control panel by default it will show up as a web page with links to click on to change security settings, user accounts, preferences, programs and features, etc. Way different from the control panel you know and love from XP that's for sure. I believe in some cases you can change it back to the XP look and feel, but in many of the cases you are stuck with the new look and feel. So bottom line if you come at Windows 7 expecting a newer version of XP forget it. Windows 7 is a whole new ball game, and needs to be treated as the new operating system that it is. Even Vista doesn't quite compare to Windows 7 because Microsoft majorly over halled the operating system removing several things that were in Vista to make it faster, more stable, support a wider range of hardware, etc while living up to being the first solid Windows operating system since XP. I'm quite happy with it, and don't mind leaving Xp behind. Finally, as for your audio games there are a few issues you need to be aware of, but in most cases they are easily fixed. One major issue is that most of the audio games out there from Draconis, L-Works, GMA, Kitchens Inc, etc were all written in Visual Basic 6 which is no longer officially supported on Windows 7. There is, however, an easy solution to the problem. If you download and install Jim Kitchens Winkit setup you will get the complete Visual Basic 6 runtime library and DirectX libraries which restores support on Windows 7 for Visual Basic applications. This means if you do that you should be able to run most of your pre-Windows 7 games without too much problem. Another issue is that Windows 7's security polacies have changed. Unfortunately, most game developers have not yet gotten around to rewriting or updating their software to properly support Windows 7's User Account Control security system. It is often responcibile for effecting the operation of several old games. One way to resolve this problem in the mean time is to disable UAC support on Windows 7. It will increase the risk of viruses and other malware, but on the other hand does resolve many compatibility issues with games and other older applications designed for Windows XP and earlier. Personally, I think that having
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
These corporations treat their call center employees the same as they treat the competition and the customer. It's a dog eat dog corporate war, and the American people are the dog food. At the credit card call center I used to work at, the management always said that the employee is the backbone of our company, and we responded, Then quit breaking your back! They said that we have to look at the big picture; the entire window. We pointed out that a lot of big pictures are, after all, comprised of very small pieces that make the whole stronger, so how about taking care to retain that strength by taking good care of those little pieces? Tom: As far as USA Games Entertainment goes, thanks for taking care of the little pieces; the customers. Keeping us up to date on the current development of your games, keeping contact in a personal way as far as answering questions, and continuing to work on games that weren't even yours to begin with. How's that for a way to get from politics back to gaming? By the way, I didn't throw that in just to get back on topic. I meant it. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 3:47 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, if we are really honest about it though companies like Microsoft and Nuance are out to rip everyone off. The more and more I look around my country, the United States, I've found myself living in a corperation owned state were it is a dog eat dog world. Every major corperation and bank has the attitude it is their God given right to rip everyone off and not pay for it. When the government handed over a 750 billion dollar bale out plan to Wall Street big wigs like City Group, Goldman and Sax, Bank of America, and A.I.G. they pretty much said in effect who our government cares about, and it certainly was not the working middle class and the average American tax payer. Now, do we really expect our current president to help stop the curuption when Obama's number one financial backer was Goldman and Sax, and some of the very same crooks that got us into this mess do to their subprime lending crap? Sigh...I didn't mean to bring politics into this discussion, but I did want to make the point that companies here in the United States are pretty cutthroat. They'll cut anyone's throat if it will make them an extra buck or two. You and I are peons in the eyes of these corperations. What do they care when their C.E.O. is making a million bucks a day in some cases. The greed of these crooks makes you want to scream doesn't it? - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I wish the pulldown menus would return. I hate ribbons. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:35 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Yes, you are right that Windows 7 does have a better Sapi voice called Anna. It is better than Mike, Mary, and Sam. However, it still isn't as good as the Scansoft Real Speak voices or the ATT Natural voices in my opinion. So even though I own Windows 7 I don't really use Anna much myself because I own better quality voices, but for a free voice it is pretty good. As for the Windows 7 interface it builds a lot upon changes introduced in Windows Vista, and is quite a bit different from Windows XP. If you haven't used Windows Vista prier to upgrading to Windows 7 then many of the changes will come as a surprise to you as things are somewhat different now. For example, when you bring up the start menu instead of a single menu or list the screen is split into columns with your frequently used programs, search field, all programs menu, etc on one side of the screen and your user directory, documents, control panel, etc on the other. It isn't difficult to navigate, but you will have to explore the new start menu some to figure out where things are. You may have to go into the start menu properties to turn some things on/off such as the run command if you want it. Another change is the old menu bars seen in older versions of Windows such as XP are pretty much a thing of the past. Now, the old menu bars have been replaced by the menu ribbins like those in Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft 2010. A lot of Microsoft's products are going that way, and that is the new look and feel you might say for all future software so you might as well get use to menu ribbins sooner or later. Another important change you'll have to get use to is a lot of the Windows 7 windows are integrated into Explorer, and have a web view look and feel to them. For example, if you click on control panel by default it will show up as a web page with links to click on to change security settings, user accounts, preferences, programs and features, etc. Way different from the control panel you know and love from XP that's for sure. I believe in some cases you can change it back to the XP look and feel, but in many of the cases you are stuck with the new look and feel. So bottom line if you come at Windows 7 expecting a newer version of XP forget it. Windows 7 is a whole new ball game, and needs to be treated as the new operating system that it is. Even Vista doesn't quite compare to Windows 7 because Microsoft majorly over halled the operating system removing several things that were in Vista to make it faster, more stable, support a wider range of hardware, etc while living up to being the first solid Windows operating system since XP. I'm quite happy with it, and don't mind leaving Xp behind. Finally, as for your audio games there are a few issues you need to be aware of, but in most cases they are easily fixed. One major issue is that most of the audio games out there from Draconis, L-Works, GMA, Kitchens Inc, etc were all written in Visual Basic 6 which is no longer officially supported on Windows 7. There is, however, an easy solution to the problem. If you download and install Jim Kitchens Winkit setup you will get the complete Visual Basic 6 runtime library and DirectX libraries which restores support on Windows 7 for Visual Basic applications. This means if you do that you should be able to run most of your pre-Windows 7 games without too much problem. Another issue is that Windows 7's security polacies have changed. Unfortunately, most game developers have not yet gotten around to rewriting or updating their software to properly support Windows 7's User Account Control security system. It is often responcibile for effecting the operation of several old games. One way to resolve this problem in the mean time is to disable UAC support on Windows 7. It will increase the risk of viruses and other malware, but on the other hand does resolve many compatibility issues with games and other older applications designed for Windows XP and earlier. Personally, I think that having UAC on provides a better layer of protection, but if you want to disable it to support older applications then it can be done. HTH On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: You're right Thomas, thanks for that I was outraged before about the prices! I wasn't going to pay 32£ odds for a voice which I can easilly access through Jaws. As I see it companies take advantage of their customers, if we buy a product we pay the money therefore it should be up to us what we do with it. On the other hand Microsoft should be giving out better Sappi voices, because even Microsoft Mary is starting to get on my nerves! I know they have a new Anna voice
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
That! really! stinks! - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
There'l all the same, I think, polititions all hot air and empty words, no action in any of them. I think us blind lot get the worst deal, £20 odds for an audio book which the lucky sighted can get for £5.99, how is that fair? - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:47 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, if we are really honest about it though companies like Microsoft and Nuance are out to rip everyone off. The more and more I look around my country, the United States, I've found myself living in a corperation owned state were it is a dog eat dog world. Every major corperation and bank has the attitude it is their God given right to rip everyone off and not pay for it. When the government handed over a 750 billion dollar bale out plan to Wall Street big wigs like City Group, Goldman and Sax, Bank of America, and A.I.G. they pretty much said in effect who our government cares about, and it certainly was not the working middle class and the average American tax payer. Now, do we really expect our current president to help stop the curuption when Obama's number one financial backer was Goldman and Sax, and some of the very same crooks that got us into this mess do to their subprime lending crap? Sigh...I didn't mean to bring politics into this discussion, but I did want to make the point that companies here in the United States are pretty cutthroat. They'll cut anyone's throat if it will make them an extra buck or two. You and I are peons in the eyes of these corperations. What do they care when their C.E.O. is making a million bucks a day in some cases. The greed of these crooks makes you want to scream doesn't it? - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Dog eat dog, sounds like a good audio game totle. Smile - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 10:53 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices These corporations treat their call center employees the same as they treat the competition and the customer. It's a dog eat dog corporate war, and the American people are the dog food. At the credit card call center I used to work at, the management always said that the employee is the backbone of our company, and we responded, Then quit breaking your back! They said that we have to look at the big picture; the entire window. We pointed out that a lot of big pictures are, after all, comprised of very small pieces that make the whole stronger, so how about taking care to retain that strength by taking good care of those little pieces? Tom: As far as USA Games Entertainment goes, thanks for taking care of the little pieces; the customers. Keeping us up to date on the current development of your games, keeping contact in a personal way as far as answering questions, and continuing to work on games that weren't even yours to begin with. How's that for a way to get from politics back to gaming? By the way, I didn't throw that in just to get back on topic. I meant it. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 3:47 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, if we are really honest about it though companies like Microsoft and Nuance are out to rip everyone off. The more and more I look around my country, the United States, I've found myself living in a corperation owned state were it is a dog eat dog world. Every major corperation and bank has the attitude it is their God given right to rip everyone off and not pay for it. When the government handed over a 750 billion dollar bale out plan to Wall Street big wigs like City Group, Goldman and Sax, Bank of America, and A.I.G. they pretty much said in effect who our government cares about, and it certainly was not the working middle class and the average American tax payer. Now, do we really expect our current president to help stop the curuption when Obama's number one financial backer was Goldman and Sax, and some of the very same crooks that got us into this mess do to their subprime lending crap? Sigh...I didn't mean to bring politics into this discussion, but I did want to make the point that companies here in the United States are pretty cutthroat. They'll cut anyone's throat if it will make them an extra buck or two. You and I are peons in the eyes of these corperations. What do they care when their C.E.O. is making a million bucks a day in some cases. The greed of these crooks makes you want to scream doesn't it? - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I don't understand it, when I got my Jaws 10 cd it's 3 disks, my serial number, my realspeak sollow direct and the actual Jaws program, no free disk? - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I will confess that while I do admire the Us atitudes on disability, this is something I like a good deal less, though I freely admit I'm rather leaning leftwards myself. Saying that, the english government (or excuse for such we have at the moment), can't really claime to be too much bettter when their privatizing national contracts and services like nobody's business. But before I turn this into a left wing liberal wrant I'll stop. Beware the grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:47 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Well, if we are really honest about it though companies like Microsoft and Nuance are out to rip everyone off. The more and more I look around my country, the United States, I've found myself living in a corperation owned state were it is a dog eat dog world. Every major corperation and bank has the attitude it is their God given right to rip everyone off and not pay for it. When the government handed over a 750 billion dollar bale out plan to Wall Street big wigs like City Group, Goldman and Sax, Bank of America, and A.I.G. they pretty much said in effect who our government cares about, and it certainly was not the working middle class and the average American tax payer. Now, do we really expect our current president to help stop the curuption when Obama's number one financial backer was Goldman and Sax, and some of the very same crooks that got us into this mess do to their subprime lending crap? Sigh...I didn't mean to bring politics into this discussion, but I did want to make the point that companies here in the United States are pretty cutthroat. They'll cut anyone's throat if it will make them an extra buck or two. You and I are peons in the eyes of these corperations. What do they care when their C.E.O. is making a million bucks a day in some cases. The greed of these crooks makes you want to scream doesn't it? - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I think that would count as cruel and unusual punishment ;D. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:48 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Lol would love to hear that one! They should play it in prisons to make people confess to wrong doings, have Sam read a long political document lasting 10 hours and see the result. Smile - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:18 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'll say this much. At least Anna doesn't sound terminally depressed the way Sam does. Makes me wish I still had the parody file I created a few years ago where Sam committed suicide. Maybe I'll ask my friend Marissa if she's still got a copy... He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:35 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Yes, you are right that Windows 7 does have a better Sapi voice called Anna. It is better than Mike, Mary, and Sam. However, it still isn't as good as the Scansoft Real Speak voices or the ATT Natural voices in my opinion. So even though I own Windows 7 I don't really use Anna much myself because I own better quality voices, but for a free voice it is pretty good. As for the Windows 7 interface it builds a lot upon changes introduced in Windows Vista, and is quite a bit different from Windows XP. If you haven't used Windows Vista prier to upgrading to Windows 7 then many of the changes will come as a surprise to you as things are somewhat different now. For example, when you bring up the start menu instead of a single menu or list the screen is split into columns with your frequently used programs, search field, all programs menu, etc on one side of the screen and your user directory, documents, control panel, etc on the other. It isn't difficult to navigate, but you will have to explore the new start menu some to figure out where things are. You may have to go into the start menu properties to turn some things on/off such as the run command if you want it. Another change is the old menu bars seen in older versions of Windows such as XP are pretty much a thing of the past. Now, the old menu bars have been replaced by the menu ribbins like those in Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft 2010. A lot of Microsoft's products are going that way, and that is the new look and feel you might say for all future software so you might as well get use to menu ribbins sooner or later. Another important change you'll have to get use to is a lot of the Windows 7 windows are integrated into Explorer, and have a web view look and feel to them. For example, if you click on control panel by default it will show up as a web page with links to click on to change security settings, user accounts, preferences, programs and features, etc. Way different from the control panel you know and love from XP that's for sure. I believe in some cases you can change it back to the XP look and feel, but in many of the cases you are stuck with the new look and feel. So bottom line if you come at Windows 7 expecting a newer version of XP forget it. Windows 7 is a whole new ball game, and needs to be treated as the new operating system that it is. Even Vista doesn't quite compare to Windows 7 because Microsoft majorly over halled the operating system removing several things that were in Vista to make it faster, more stable, support a wider range of hardware, etc while living up to being the first solid Windows operating system since XP. I'm quite happy with it, and don't mind leaving Xp behind. Finally, as for your audio games there are a few issues you need to be aware of, but in most cases they are easily fixed. One major issue is that most of the audio games out there from Draconis, L-Works, GMA, Kitchens Inc, etc were all written in Visual Basic 6 which is no longer officially supported on Windows 7. There is, however, an easy solution to the problem. If you download and install Jim Kitchens Winkit setup you will get the complete Visual Basic 6 runtime library and DirectX libraries which restores support on Windows 7 for Visual Basic applications. This means if you do that you should be able to run most of your pre-Windows 7 games without too much problem. Another issue is that Windows 7's security polacies have changed. Unfortunately, most game developers have not yet gotten around to rewriting or updating their software to properly support Windows 7's User Account Control security system. It is often responcibile for effecting the operation of several old games. One way to resolve
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Generally charles, this is a really nice thing about all indi games developement generally, accessible or otherwise. the devs are accessible (ha ha), to suggestions, feedback and ideas from customers, they're not forced to work by the corprate whip, and can considder factors like game access. Just look at Niels bauer and eaccess in the smugglers and Tv manager game as a good example, then compare this to capcom, sony, or any other of the multi million monstrosities! Methinks I need say no more. Beware the grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
That would one voice that I would immediately delete! I would like to see the person deleted from our Presidency, too! - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I'm no supporter of his either. That's why I think it'd be funny to use him in my screen reader. He could do soemthing useful for a change. But I'll shut up now lest I draw the discussion to actual politics, a subject which I generally hate with a burning, fiery passion. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices That would one voice that I would immediately delete! I would like to see the person deleted from our Presidency, too! - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Brian, Awww...you don't like politics? I love it, and if Obama was deleted I wouldn't cry...but I digress. That would be funny. Could you imagine him in entombed, announcing that Alissa had cast ra of destrucution? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Peterson Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:24 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm no supporter of his either. That's why I think it'd be funny to use him in my screen reader. He could do soemthing useful for a change. But I'll shut up now lest I draw the discussion to actual politics, a subject which I generally hate with a burning, fiery passion. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices That would one voice that I would immediately delete! I would like to see the person deleted from our Presidency, too! - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi, How many terrists are in on it? I don't know! I'll never tell you! Well then...let's just see how you fair under the torture of...SAPI voices! Two minutes Later... I'll tell you! Don't play anymore! Grin Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of dark Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:32 PM To: Lori Duncan; Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I think that would count as cruel and unusual punishment ;D. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:48 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Lol would love to hear that one! They should play it in prisons to make people confess to wrong doings, have Sam read a long political document lasting 10 hours and see the result. Smile - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:18 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'll say this much. At least Anna doesn't sound terminally depressed the way Sam does. Makes me wish I still had the parody file I created a few years ago where Sam committed suicide. Maybe I'll ask my friend Marissa if she's still got a copy... He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:35 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Yes, you are right that Windows 7 does have a better Sapi voice called Anna. It is better than Mike, Mary, and Sam. However, it still isn't as good as the Scansoft Real Speak voices or the ATT Natural voices in my opinion. So even though I own Windows 7 I don't really use Anna much myself because I own better quality voices, but for a free voice it is pretty good. As for the Windows 7 interface it builds a lot upon changes introduced in Windows Vista, and is quite a bit different from Windows XP. If you haven't used Windows Vista prier to upgrading to Windows 7 then many of the changes will come as a surprise to you as things are somewhat different now. For example, when you bring up the start menu instead of a single menu or list the screen is split into columns with your frequently used programs, search field, all programs menu, etc on one side of the screen and your user directory, documents, control panel, etc on the other. It isn't difficult to navigate, but you will have to explore the new start menu some to figure out where things are. You may have to go into the start menu properties to turn some things on/off such as the run command if you want it. Another change is the old menu bars seen in older versions of Windows such as XP are pretty much a thing of the past. Now, the old menu bars have been replaced by the menu ribbins like those in Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft 2010. A lot of Microsoft's products are going that way, and that is the new look and feel you might say for all future software so you might as well get use to menu ribbins sooner or later. Another important change you'll have to get use to is a lot of the Windows 7 windows are integrated into Explorer, and have a web view look and feel to them. For example, if you click on control panel by default it will show up as a web page with links to click on to change security settings, user accounts, preferences, programs and features, etc. Way different from the control panel you know and love from XP that's for sure. I believe in some cases you can change it back to the XP look and feel, but in many of the cases you are stuck with the new look and feel. So bottom line if you come at Windows 7 expecting a newer version of XP forget it. Windows 7 is a whole new ball game, and needs to be treated as the new operating system that it is. Even Vista doesn't quite compare to Windows 7 because Microsoft majorly over halled the operating system removing several things that were in Vista to make it faster, more stable, support a wider range of hardware, etc while living up to being the first solid Windows operating system since XP. I'm quite happy with it, and don't mind leaving Xp behind. Finally, as for your audio games there are a few issues you need to be aware of, but in most cases they are easily fixed. One major issue is that most of the audio games out there from Draconis, L-Works, GMA, Kitchens Inc, etc were all written in Visual Basic 6 which is no longer officially supported on Windows 7. There is, however, an easy solution to the problem. If you download and install Jim Kitchens Winkit setup you will get the complete Visual Basic 6 runtime library and DirectX libraries which restores support on Windows 7 for Visual Basic
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi, Lol...I use to always get the so the cane helps you see?. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Peterson Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 3:24 PM To: Lori Duncan; Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Rail Racer did sort of explore that territory actually. Personally my idea was more along the lines of a blind version of The Simpsons where the blind folks would be more the Lisa types while the sighties would be more like Bart and Homer. Of course that wouldn't be entirely fair to the ones who recently lost their sight, since however much the sighted community might get things wrong where we're concerned they do deserve at least some compassion. But a blind protagonist isn't out of the question in some of my games, and not just having to do with blindness. Maybe I'll parody the misconception some sighted folks have that we're gifted with superpowers. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:58 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I know, we pay them and they still rob us blind! Trying to get help or answers out of Microsoft or any of these developers is like getting blood out of a stone! For you gamers, here's a thought for if you're developing audio games. A game called Turn the Tables, where one day after a plague has devistated the land the sighted community awakes to find itself totally without sight, so it's then up to the blind to rule the world. Smile - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:43 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
HI Thomas, That's exactly why I have to keep the JAWS 9 CD around. I don't use the Scansoft voices often, but I always use them with Jim's games as well as RailRacer. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:43 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Hi Thomas, And you know, the first time I heard that, it cleared up a lot of things. I never understood why Freedom Scientific ended up making these massive downloads to realspeak solo direct, until I heard that. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:23 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi, I'd highly recommend that you don't buy the Scansoft Real Speak voices from Nextup.com and here is why. As I understand it a while backNuance, the company that owns Scansoft, has changed the way it licences its Real Speak voices. Under the new licensing scheme the products must be purchased by a company and then locked specifically to that product. In other words if you buy Scansoft Karen, Tom, whatever from Nextup.com those will only work with Nextup.com's products such as Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, and News Aloud. You can not turn around and use it with Window-Eyes, Jaws, or your favorite game by Jim Kitchen, because they are no longer, strictly speaking, Sapi voices. They must be accessed using a specific product, and only that specific product through a special license. So if you want to use Scansoft Tom, Daniel, Karen, etc with Jaws 11 you must license the voice through Freedom Scientific for Jaws. If you want to use those voices with Text Aloud you have to turn around and license a copy of those voices through Nextup.com specifically for that product. In short, those voices are going to cost you dearly to have, and I am vvery glad that I managed to purchase those voices when Jaws 8 and Openbook 8 came out when they were still Sapi voices and not under the new more restrictive license. I hate to say it, but at this point I don't know of any legal way to get the older Sapi 5 voices without resorting to outright piracy, and it seams to me to be the logical result of this kind of radical, money grabbing, greedy, unfair change in licensing. Normally I don't advocate software piracy, but when a company makes this kind of idiotic polacy I don't feel a bit sorry if it happens to them. It is one thing to charge once for a product that you can use with most of your software, but quite another when the license basically forces you to purchase a copy for each and every product you intend to use it with. This is criminal in my book, and the company does not deserve any mor of our business until they shape up and change their polacy. I could be wrong about all this, but it seams odd to me that the Scansoft and Nuance web sites no longer have the Real Speak voices for sale on their web site like the use to. When I check Nextup.com they say right on the web site that these voices will only work with Nextup.com products. Go to Freedom Scientific, guess what, all of the new Scansoft voice downloads only work with Jaws and not anything else. So what is really going on here? On 5/12/10, Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net wrote: The only place I know of is www.nextup.com. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
I use them for other applications as well. I'm keeping that CD! - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:45 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices HI Thomas, That's exactly why I have to keep the JAWS 9 CD around. I don't use the Scansoft voices often, but I always use them with Jim's games as well as RailRacer. Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:43 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Muhammed, Yes, i know that. However, you seamed to have missed the fact that cd no longer ships with newer versions of Jaws. Gone, history, no more. Now, all they offer is those downloadable pieces of crap that only work with Jaws. As I am more of a Window-Eyes user, not a Jaws user per say, I am extremely offended by that change in polacy. if I buy it I better be able to use it with whatever screen reader I choose regardless of license agreement or greedy polacy. On 5/12/10, Muhammed Deniz muhamme...@googlemail.com wrote: If you want to really use them, the disk is on the jaws cd. They are about 2 cd's in the case. It's the second cd which is located to the right side. When you install that, it would work with everything! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices
Actually the voice i'd really like to see as a screen reader voice would have to be either Homer Simpson or Ned Flanders. Now that would be funny. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:54 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Brian, Awww...you don't like politics? I love it, and if Obama was deleted I wouldn't cry...but I digress. That would be funny. Could you imagine him in entombed, announcing that Alissa had cast ra of destrucution? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Peterson Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:24 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm no supporter of his either. That's why I think it'd be funny to use him in my screen reader. He could do soemthing useful for a change. But I'll shut up now lest I draw the discussion to actual politics, a subject which I generally hate with a burning, fiery passion. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: Charles Rivard woofer...@sbcglobal.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices That would one voice that I would immediately delete! I would like to see the person deleted from our Presidency, too! - Original Message - From: Bryan Peterson bpeterson2...@cableone.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices I'm downloading one of them now as I write this. I probably shouldn't have forked over the cash just now but I was impressed enough with the quality. It's an Irish voice named Catelynn. It's unfortunate though that the celebrity voices offered as samples are apparently not available for purchase. It'd be funny to draft Barak Obama as a voice in Window-Eyes or even some of my games. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle of ggh. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Well i'm glad I also have a sapi enabled copy of daniel, and I certainly have no plans to stop using it for Entombed, Jim's games, blind adrenalin or indeed anything else just because nuance are being so ridiculous. On the pluss side, there are some very good alternative voices available. John Banic recently put me in the direction of a company called ceerproc, who's voices are really rather impressive in terms of natural sound and cadence, and are sold as stand alone voices which may be used for various other programs. Look them up at http://www.cereproc.com/home Hth. Beware the Grue! dark. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com; Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi Lori, Like I just wrote in my last message I really don't know of any place where the generic Sapi versions of the Scansoft voices can be located these days. A friend of mine wanted a copy like I own, that came with Jaws 8 and Openbook 8, that works with games, screen readers, and everything else, and unfortunately they can't be found anywhere. I've checked the Nuance web site and there is no listing for the voices as their once was a couple years back, and if you get them with one of their Scansoft products like Omnipage apparently the voices only work with Omnipage and nothing else. If you get them with Jaws or Openbook from Freedom Scientific they only work with Freedom Scientific products. If you buy them from Nextup they only work with products like Text Aloud, News Aloud, and Weather Aloud. If you buy a GPS with them on them they only work on that GPS device of course. In short, there seams to be a universal change in the way Nuance does business and how exactly they license their Real Speak voices. There doesn't seam to be a way to license and use them as a standard generic Sapi voice any more. At least not publically anyway. On 5/12/10, Lori Duncan lori_dunca...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the best places is to get the scansoft voices for Sappi5? I know there are natural voices from different suppliers but am actually a bit shocked at the price, especially as some of them which are supposed to sound natural sound a bit stilted. I'd like to get the Scansoft Karon one. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr
