Re: Different behavior between RealSpeak voices
- From: Alex Midence <alex.midence@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:03:57 -0500
Hi,
DecTalk is a high quality speech synthesizer taht has been around a
long long time. If you have ever used a kurzweill reading machine
product, you have ehard DecTalk before. For a while it was one of the
most sought-after speech synthesizers by blind people for their
software. Personally, I'd still love to have it. YOu can get it as a
software package, DecTalk Access 32, or, as an external unit you
attach to your pc. It's now being developed by Fonix. It was
invented by a man named Dennis Klatt back in the 80's. Here are some
links:
http://koti.welho.com/slemmett/dippa/appa.html
An interesting link that has samples of speech synthesizers from as
far back as the 1930's. Just do a control find and type in dectalk if
you want to jump right to dectalk and hear it without listening to all
the prior samples. found it really interesting though. Made me wish
some of the others I heard were available for jaws.
And, a hilarious, and rather creepy one:
http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/irmurray/dectalkf.asp Somebody
taught DecTalk to sing. No lie, it's pretty freaky weird.
Regards,
Alex M
On 8/11/10, Dorothy Ingram-Gorban <dorothy.ingram-gorban@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Forgive my ignorance, but
> what is or was Decktalk? I finally got used to artificial speech but at
> start eloquence sounded awful, I use better voices for my Ocr. I am trying
> to recall what I once read on a list here in the Uk about Jaws and speech,
> the reply and this must be a couple of years ago was that some voices are
> made up of real human speech in digitised form, the person who asked the
> question I recall wanted to know why "jaws sounds tired and running out of
> breath at times, she thought the poor fellow was getting worn out . The
> techies answer and I cannot remember the spelling was that"the rise and fall
> of Jaws voice when reading long passages was normal, and he used a word to
> describe it. I think it was something like Procededgy ,I should have checked
> it in dictionary first but you may all know what it means Dorothy
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
> Of Alex Midence
> Sent: 11 August 2010 07:43
> To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Different behavior between RealSpeak voices
>
> Hi,
>
> The most responsive sapi 5 voice I have found is e-speak which is,
> most unfortunately, not available for Jaws for some reason. E-speak
> is not what you could call natural-sounding. It sounds horrid,
> actually. None of the natural-sounding voices are going to be
> responsive because they are too cumbersome since their goal is not
> responsiveness but, rather, to mimic the quality you get from a human
> reader as closely as possible. They are used by automated phone
> systems, talking caller id's, public transportation announcements, and
> other things. With Jaws, I use the sapi 5 voices during say all when I
> am reading a book or a long webpage or something like that. To me,
> the best balance between clarity and responsiveness is still and
> probably always will be Dec talk. If I remember correctly, Jaws does
> support all flavors of it. It doesn't sound human but the
> pronunciation is just amazing. Acclaimed physicist Steven Hawking
> used it as his voice for communicating with people for years and
> years. You can still hear it on the weather channel from time to time
> too. Always get a kick out of that one. The different voices sound
> more pleasant too. No shivers, quavers, or shakes like you get in the
> natural sounding voices. Very smooth and very clear right up to
> several hundred words per minute. Do that with Samantha and she
> sounds like a cross between a goat and an opera singer being violently
> shaken.
>
> Incidentally, my personal favorite sapi 5 voice is Karen. An absolute
> pleasure to listen to and the accent falls very nicely on the ear.
> After that, I'd say I like Tom the best trailed by Lee as the third.
> Personal preference.
>
> Alex M
>
>
>
> On 8/10/10, Yadiel <yadosotomayor@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Yes! Although I prefer jill. "She" sounds... well... in lack of a better
>> phrase, more sweet and plecent to the ear. Although, not as responsive. In
>> fact, I yet haven't found a voice that is as responsive as I would like.
>> Real Speak Solo direct or sappy 5, I still can't find a good sounding
>> responsive voice. That is why I use eloquence for most of my task
> including
>> web surfing and use the real speak and sappy 5s for reading very long
>> documents.
>>
>>
>> Yadiel
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------
>> From: "Dale E. Heltzer" <deheltzer@xxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 8:47 PM
>> To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Subject: Different behavior between RealSpeak voices
>>
>>> Some days ago I posted about how RealSpeak Daniel doesn't always
>>> pronounce words the way they're written.
>>> I've been using Samantha, and have noticed no such shortcomings - and
>>> "she" is much more responsive than Daniel.
>>>
>>> Anyone else notice this?
>>> ---
>>> Dale E. Heltzer
>>> deheltzer@xxxxxxx
>>>
>>>
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