Windows TTS- what about "Narrator"?

[Chipp Walters]

Paul,

There are a number of issues concerning what you want to do.

1) Current XP uses SAPI 5 which is not *currently* supported in RR.
2) AT&T Natural Voices are in most people's opinion the very best...and AT&T
knows this. They have been *very* hesitant to license them to
developers --unless you pay a buttload (texas term) of $$$$. I checked into
this a couple of years ago when they first came out. So, if you want to
develop an application and bundle the voices with it, it will be very
expensive.

I suppose a way around this is to force your users to pre-Install something
like ReadPlease, though I'm still not sure AT&T would look fondly at a
commercial app developed around their technology without them getting a
royalty.

Interesting to find out what you learn after talking to the ReadPlease
folks. My guess, is 'NO, you CAN'T use the voices without licensing them.'

best,

Chipp

> I joined the list just this morning and have missed some of the prior
> discussion about Windows TTS. I am hoping my Revolution stack using
> revSpeak will be able to access Windows TTS functionality as provided
> by <http://readplease.com/rplisten.php>ReadPlease, which uses the
> AT&T NaturalSpeak engine. If you have not heard their 16bit voices,
> you will be shocked! The Rich and Claire voices are by far the most
> natural sounding TTS I have ever heard and may even replace
> professional announcers in quality. Unfortunately, chews up massive
> system resources.
>
> I'm hoping some of you have insight on how to make this work. I infer
> from early replies to this thread that revSpeak does NOT support XP,
> but then this message...
>

>
> I plan to contact ReadPlease tomorrow to find out if the AT&T TTS
> software is installed as a system resource and can be accessed by the
> Speech Control Panel like the Lernout & Hauspie TruVoice I tried
> yesterday on W98 machine. Will report back. Not sure if this means
> rveSpeak will access it, though. Any opinions?
>
> Thanks,
> Paul Stary