Windows sound and music--help!

[Ken Norris]

Hi Chipp,

> Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 17:15:47 -0500
> From: "Chipp Walters" <chipp at chipp.com>
> Subject: RE: Windows sound and music--help!

> Except where it comes to synthetic voices...Windows shines over Mac with
> AT&T Natural Voices:
> <http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/> (choose Mike)
----------
I don't think so. I tried them on both platforms and thought they were the
same. Maybe your Win box is hooked up to a better sound system.

There are two other important items to consider:

1) It's not the platform in this case, but the AT&T voice engine that does
the work. It's a great voice engine, no doubt about that.

2) That engine doesn't come with the Windows operating system. Should I
expect my potential clients to have to purchase extra software for a chunk
of $$?

===========
NOTE: I actually can't find a price for AT&T Natural Voices. WIZARD is the
site AT&T touts as a dealer, but there aren't any prices I could find.
Apparently they expect you to buy voice fonts and the SDK without knowing
what they cost. If anyone has another purchase site, please let me know
(offlist if you like).
===========

See what I mean? What should I say? I'm sorry, you can't use this unless you
BUY AT&T Natural Voices for Windows....?

Believe me, that won't go over well. OTOH, the Mac's built-in voices are
plenty good enough to use for our purposes.

If Windows came with voices of AT&T quality, along with a few other things,
I might seriously think about changing my own personal development platform
some day, but that ain't how it is. I just wish it came with something more
than it has, is all. Windows XP isn't that cheap, and the newest SAPI
apparently broke the revSpeak function.

'Course we still have yet to find out what might be broken on the Mac under
Panther, eh?

Ken N.