Category: Geeks r Us
HI all:
I was wondering if any of you have installed the new SAPI voices for JAWS, and which you like best? I do technology evaluations and recommendations for my employer, and while I have my own personal preference of the new voices, I'd like some other opinions just so people don't get what Lou thinks is best.
Thanks in advance,
Lou
I actually got an e-mail about them from nextup.com, which is also where the at&t natural voices came from, and it gave me a link to preview them, and personally I didn't think the majority of them were all that wonderful. Several of them to me sounded a lot like someone talking underwater, and compared to both the neospeech voices and the at&t natural voices I was somewhat disappointed in them.
I think I'd honestly prefer the Neospeech voices due to their clarity, but haven't gotten around to buying them yet, and I don't have the harddrive space for them.
quite frankly, everyone will have an opinion on what sounds the best. What i'd recommend is putting samples of the voices on a cd or some portable medium, and letting the user decide for him/herself.
Why go to the trouble of doing that though when you can go to their web site and listen to them there?
I installed them from the disk that fs put in with the 8.0 package. I like Daniel he's very understandable for my tts games and for reading. I would like to have sapi as my default synthesizer with the new voices but sapi has too much of a lag.
Troy
yeah, i agree with you troy, i like the voices for some quick reading, but sapi is way too slow for my computer needs
My favorite new voice is Jill because there seems to be something calming in her voice. Sometimes, I think the human Jill is some sort of counselor. However, I agree that Daniel is the best voice.
I like to use Jill as my synthesizer forj aws, instead of just using her for a say all.
Now this beggs a question: are these voices tied to Jaws via authorization or can they be installed on a machine running somethinkg else with no jaws present? Example, the voices that come with Kurzweil will not let you install them unless the proper version of Kurzweil 1000 is present.
well a quick MSI edit with orca will fix that problem.
WillieTheWoof,
It has been my experience that the RealSpeak voices will not be recognized by Jaws or the speech component of Windows until the "use sapi for say all" is checked in jaw's configuration manager. In other words, I doubt the new voices will work on a computer that does not have jaws version 8.0 or later installed.
hi i have yet to receuive my jaws cd so i can not use the new voicdes yet.
matthew
Good evening. I did install Jaws 8 for a client and the new voices and I didn't have to check anything. they did work but they did say a freedomscientific product has to be installed. After installing them I was able to use the voices for a talking typing tutor since they are sapi complient.
Thanks, John. I never thought of that. Thanks to you all for your suggestions and thoughts.
how do you install them do you just stick the cd in and off you go???
Yes. You have to tell it to use the say-all voices in the JAWS Configuration Manager after you install them. If you want help doing this, you can either look in the What's New section of the help files, look on their website, or if you want to e-mail me here on the Zone, I'll be glad to talk you through it.
Lou