[macvoiceover] Re: iPhone voices

Hi Bryan,

Thanks for going more into detail. It was a pleasure to read and I've learned 
something from your post.

Thanks. :)

-Peter

Op 23-jun-2010, om 20:06 heeft Bryan Smart het volgende geschreven:

> Samantha was one of the first generation of voices created for RealSpeak. 
> Just like why Microsoft SAM is the default synth for SAPI versions 5 and 
> earlier, she is the default synth because she had the least amount of 
> pronunciation mistakes. For SAPI, for example Mike and Mary both sounded more 
> human-like, and less depressed than Sam, but, due to limitations with their 
> recorded audio, they mispronounced more words. RealSpeak Tom, the only other 
> RealSpeak and Vocalizer US English voice, also has this problem on occasion.
> 
> Another reason for her continued use is that, by fortunate coincidence, she 
> still sounds alright when extremely compressed. To make Vocalizer voices, the 
> RealSpeak audio recordings for the voices are highly compressed. Compression 
> produces audio artifacts. If you listen to Tom on the Stream, for example, he 
> sounds horrible when compared to the RealSpeak version for the desktop. For 
> tech reasons that would take a while to explain, higher pitched voices 
> compress better. So, this has further pushed out Tom, and secured Samantha as 
> the voice that you hear when Vocalizer is used in mobile applications. I 
> think that this is why Apple doesn't bother to include Tom on iOS.
> 
> The horrible thing about Samantha is her intonation model. Intonation is the 
> way the pitch of a person's speech rises and falls while speaking, in order 
> to convey emotion and provide the listener with information regarding the 
> approach of clause and sentence breaks. Samantha has little to no work in 
> this area. That's why she sounds like, as a I recently heard someone say, "an 
> angry robot". The RealSpeak voices since Samantha have had a lot more work 
> put in to intonation. Even with Tom's pronunciation mistakes, his intonation 
> is very smooth when compared to Samantha. For an extreme example, listen to 
> Daniel. His pattern models an announcer for radio voiceovers.
> 
> Intonation is hard to get right, cause the computer doesn't know anything 
> about the meaning of what it is reading. TTS programmers must create a model 
> that is general purpose, without sounding lifeless.
> 
> Nuance really needs to make another US English voice. As one of the first 
> products of RealSpeak, she has served well for a long time, but she's out of 
> date. I don't know of any plans to do anything about that situation, though. 
> Vocalizer is available for most every imbedded architecture, and supports 
> most all major languages. They don't have any real competition at the moment. 
> Where they did have competition, they've purchased the companies that made 
> it, and killed the products. For example, they also own both Eloquence and 
> DECtalk. Eloquence is being discontinued for anyone except those that hold 
> long-term licensing agreements (like Freedom Scientific and GW Micro), though 
> updates to the synth won't continue, and even those people will have to move 
> to something else in a few years (most likely RealSpeak). DECtalk is being 
> similarly canceled, due, in part, to the source code being lost as it was 
> repeatedly bought and sold in the early 2000s. Accapella is about their only 
> real competition now. If you saw a list of all of the companies that Nuance 
> has bought over the last 15 years, you wouldn't believe it. Acquiring 
> companies is what they do. I worry that, some day soon, I'll see a press 
> release saying that they've purchased the Accapella Group, and soon after, 
> will discontinue their synth. At that point, the only TTS system left that 
> supports a comprehensive set of multiple architectures and languages will be 
> ESpeak. Yuck!
> 
> Bryan
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: macvoiceover-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:macvoiceover-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Cheryl Homiak
> Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:12 PM
> To: macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [macvoiceover] iPhone voices
> 
> I'm wondering why our U.S. English voice has to sound so awful (imho) when 
> some of the voices sound not bad at all. I think Australian sounds nice but 
> maybe that's just because of the accent; maybe Australians think this voice 
> is as bad as Samantha. Spanish has a male voice which I also think doesn't 
> sound bad at all. I always thought we had to put up with Samantha due to the 
> size of the program or resources used but now i'm wondering. Anyway, it's 
> nice to have a choice. My apologies to those who like Samantha; I know voice 
> preferences are a deeply personal matter but I strongly dislike her on the 
> Stream and only find her slightly more tolerable on the iPhone and iPad. 
> Again, it is great to easily be able to change it now.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Cheryl
> "Let the words of my mouth,
> and the meditation of my heart,
> be acceptable in thy sight,
> O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer."
> (Psalm 19:14  Bible KJV)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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