Gordon I will try the British Acapella voices and let you know. So far I
like Ivona a lot.
On 14/05/2012 15:03, Gordon Smith wrote:
Hi Chris
I stand corrected! I didn't note any UK voices, just American English. But on
this occasion I am very pleased to be proven wrong, and I will definitely go
and look at that site again. However, I stand by my initial comments that they
really would have to push the boundaries to compete with Acapella Group's
InfoVox Desktop v3. But all the same, thank you very much for the correction.
Gordon
On 14 May 2012, at 12:32, chris hallsworth<[email protected]>
wrote:
Gordon they do three british voices Ivona. Amy, Brian and Emma. I am trying Amy
and this is the voice used on the new talking Freeview recorder launched just
over a week ago by RNIB in collaboration with Tvonics and oddly enough Ivona.
So yes there are British voices available.
On 14/05/2012 10:28, Gordon Smith wrote:
Hi all
I was very interested to read the stuff floating around in various places
regarding the Ivona voices. Unless I'm missing a trick, however, the only
English language voice support is United State English. Personally speaking, I
still believe that the InfoVox Desktop version 3.0 for Windows has much more to
offer than Ivona does. I tried the Ivona voices briefly over the weekend and
came away encouraged, but not convinced. I believe that nothing has yet stolen
Acapella Grou's crown, they're still king of the road cross-platform as far as
I'm concerned. They have much more versatility and I honestly believe that
when you set US voice against US voice, Acapella Group's InfoVox Desktop v3.0
for Windows still comes out tops.
Of course, it's only fair to give Ivona credit for the good work they're doing. It's not at all
bad technology, please don't anybody get the idea that I'm slamming them, definitely not. I also
think that their prices are more attractive than those of Acapella Group, as is availability. Were
it not for the fact that my other half bought me a USB thumb drive version of the InfoVox voices,
(known as the "InKey" version), I'd no doubt still be stuck with Nuance's RealSpeak, as I
believe it's now branded. Daniel, Leigh, Karen and the rest are not too bad, but not a patch on
either Ivona or InfoVox. One thing which really irritates the hell out of me with the Nuance
voices is their persistent changing of text displayed to something entirely different. Apple is
guilty of this crime with their speech API as well. For instance, the phrase "Downloading at
100 K/Secretary" means absolutely nothing to me. Why, oh why, I wonder, must they try to
distort what's actually being di
s
pl
ayed on screen by changing it to something else? I know that Travis and I
have discussed this gripe several times and I think we're in full agreement.
The job of the screen-reader and the speech synthesiser is to impart to the
user what is actually there rather than what nameless people think we want to
hear.
Anyway, just my little bit for whatever it's worth. If Ivona comes up with a
British voice then I'll seriously think about it. Development of that kind
should always be encouraged.
Gordon
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