[access-uk] Re: Acapela Voices.

MessageAgreed Mike, and a little slow too Daniel.

Eleanor
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Mike Cassidy
  To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 3:39 PM
  Subject: [access-uk] Re: Acapela Voices.


  Hi Tink,

  This is a late reply, but what a very helpful comment. Funnily enough, I 
prefer the Eloquence-type synthesis; I find the concatenative speech almost 
over-real, just too exaggerated.

  Thanks,

  Mike
    -----Original Message-----
    From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Léonie Watson
    Sent: 20 October 2008 17:27
    To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Subject: [access-uk] Re: Acapela Voices.


        It may not be the case here, but it's worth knowing that the Acapela 
voices use concatonative speech synthesis, as opposed to engines such as 
Eloquence, witch use formative speech synthesis. The trade off is between 
realism and responsiveness.

        Concatonative synthesis is based on recordings of real voices. Acapela 
use a form of concatonative synthesis known as unit selection synthesis. 
Essentially, this breaks down the real voice recordings into phones, syllables, 
words and phrases and stores them in a database. When text is converted into 
speech, the text is analysed and the resulting speech is built from the 
building blocks held in the database.

        Formative synthesis relies entirely on artificially generated sound. 
The upshot is that although concatonative synthesis sounds more real, it is 
often less responsive and prone to technical glitches. Formative synthesis 
sounds much less real, but tends to be more responsive.

    Léonie.




    --
    http://www.tink.co.uk/






----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Roy Bannister
    Sent: 20 October 2008 09:41
    To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Subject: [access-uk] Acapela Voices.


    Thanks to Steve sending a demo disk of Acapela voices I have had a chance 
to try odd ones. I normally use Reed from Window-Eyes Eloquence, or Paul on 
Satogo Dectalk. I found Peter and Ryan were acceptable for reading text 
passages at a reasonable speed, found them slightly jerky with final syllables 
sometimes clipped. However when typing using either of them I find them rather 
sluggish, also the upper case letters are not announced in a higher pitch, I 
definitely don't care for this. I have Skread installed on my machine with 
Skype, using my normal voices, the Skread voice will announce details whilst 
the other voice may be reading something else, this doesn't happen with the 
Acapela voices, they are not trying to use the same voice. My machine is a dual 
core 2.8Gb processor with 1Gb of ram, this makes me suspect that the Acapela 
voices are memory hungry. I will be interested in other users verdicts.
    Cheers
     Roy
    roy.bannister@xxxxxxxxxxxx
    Skype: roybannister4787

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