Voices

Ken Norris pixelbird at interisland.net
Sun Jun 29 17:17:01 EDT 2003


Hi Stephen,

> Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 00:16:38 -0400
> From: Stephen Messimer
> Subject: Re: Voices

> From  your responses it doesn't sound like this is going to be very easy on
> the windows side. Bummer. I will probably  to do this for the mac side.
> 
> Is there any other way to accomplish this on windows?
----------
If you really want the same voices cross-platform, I think the only solution
is IBM ViaVoice. Although its primary function is for dictation, it also has
TTS. I've just inquired of IBM of what voices are available for both
platforms. The original price for ViaVoice Pro for Windows was $199, but
here's the best price I found today ($27.95 U.S....that's REALLY CHEAP!!):

<http://tekdeal.zoovy.com/product/IBMVVP91OEM?meta=G1VIAVOICE>

...but the Mac version for OSX, which I understand is a superior product as
far as speech-recognition (not what we're discussing, but none-the-less
valuable), is pricier. The best price I found was here ($124.95 U.S.):

<http://www.scansoft.com/viavoice/osx/>

If you're willing to set up your distribution software with different speech
parameters for Windows, you should probably look over these sites:

<http://www.vioio.com/voices.htm>

<http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud/download.html>

If the Rev team is at all serious about TTS for Windows, then I think they
have to get past the limitations of the MS offering and pick a couple of the
cheap/free speech engine packages like the above to provide support for. But
for all I know, those engines may already work with the current version, as
I haven't tried them yet (I need another monitor switch cable and to D/L Rev
2.0.1 on my Compaq).

Windows 2000/XP already has its own TTS installed, but, of course, you need
a compatible sound card for any sound reproduction, and the available voices
are very limited (it comes only with "Sam"...sheesh, you'd think they'd at
least offer one other female voice, eh?).

But it's just a little better version of the old Windows '95  Narrator which
is extremely limited.

Here's some how-to info for Windows voice control panel setup.

<http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/rateofttsplayback.aspx>

HTH,
Ken N.







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