Category: Geeks r Us
Hi people
I'm curious to get to know what you think about the different synthesizers that are available to us and by that I mean speech synths. I'd like to hear what yu use and why you like the synths you do use. Do you prefer to use one and always use that one or do you like to change them every once in a while.
And an afterthought: Why is eloquence so damn good, and how fast can you crank it?
I use Eloquence, because that's what I've always used.
I tried some of the higher quality voices that are available with recent versions of Jaws, but it was just really odd not to have Eloquence reading my screen. I did like the quality and slightly better inflection that the other voices have, but they tend to mispronounce more words. And, for some reason, it just didn't feel as though I was using Jaws, because the voice was different.
Same with NVDA. While Espeak makes me cringe, I don't think I'd change it. Partially, that's because I don't use NVDA enough to seriously consider it, and partially it's because Espeak is "NVDA's voice" to me.
Maybe I'm weird, but that's how I see it.
I like Eloquence. It's very responsive, and I'm used to it. I can understand it better than any other speech synth I've tried so far.
I'm with posts 2 and 3. I've used Eloquence since 1998. I also like DEC-Talk, but it doesn't seem to be available anymore.
I use Eloquence on the PC with all my Windows screen readers, and Alex on the
Mac and iOS devices. I've never really liked the RealSpeak and other natural
sounding voices because they always sound slightly off if they mispronounce a
word. Eloquence and others are supposed to be synthetic so I don't mind them
sounding so. I used to really like the Keynote Gold synthesisers and was
disappointed when they discontinued their Multimedia software synth, so it's
been Eloquence for me for over 15 years.
Keynote was fun to fuck around with. If you put the speech rate and the pitch all the way down, it would squeak at the end of sentences.
A friend and I used to make keynote do some weird things. if you make an entire line of a, then play it back, it actually soundled like our braillenotes were screaming.!
It sounded scared when it would read a question.
I like a lot of things about Alex on iOS, I don't use a mac so can't compare. But it seems to mispronounce more words than the normal female VoiceOver voice does. Especially names. Not really sure why that would be, though. And lol to Post 2: You know, I practically see my iPhone as female because the voice has been that female voice for so many years, so switching over to Alex was a bit dysphoric for some reason. But I switch back and forth between Eloquence and the Vocalizer Expressive with JAWS, and use eloquence with NVDA.
I use Eloquence cause like anth I can understand it best.i also love alex, and that is one of the things that was a major consideration with me getting the iPhone. I also like the narrator voice Dave in Windows 8, though I haven't heard that much.
Eloquence, and nothing else. It's less fatiguing to my ear than the so-called humanlike voices. I only wish there was a way to listen to Daisy text files with a synth voice. Why doesn't one of these small Daisy players use one?
The vr Stream does have a few tts voices built into it, I think you press 9 to switch over to tts mode.
I mostly use ESpeak.
Does the Alex voice still breathe? I found that very strange.
I kinda miss the old Eloquence that came with Jaws 3.2. It had almost a Russian sounding accent.
yes Alex still breathe's. its waaay cool!
A few of the international voices breathe also, or at least used to. I don't mess with those anymore, haven't in at least a year. But the Irish one and I think Australia female one used to breathe on the iPhone.
The old Eloquence used to breathe at the end of sentences or somewhere in the middle.
I used eloquence with jaws, and DECTalk with NVDA.
Is it a software DECtalk?
I cant stand ESpeak.
Ivona with Jaws, NVDA (on my own computers), Kurzweil 1000 and Narrator, SVOX Pico with NVDA (USB), and Google Talkback with Telorion.
A speech synth should not be "natural" sounding, rather, it should be responsive, neutral, fast, free-and-open source..... And the winners are.... Espeak and Flite!
No. It should be all those things, and natural sounding.
I like using the Robert variant with NVDA.
Cranking the inflection to 100 and having the speed set to 55 without using the rate boost.
All the other eSpeak variants sound more robotic.
I primarily use eloquence right now, but I use the Decktalk voice with NVDA, too, sometimes.
to answer a previous question about that, the Decktalk voice is not software, but just something you can install, in addition to NVDA.
I personally like eloquence, because that is what I'm used to, but like someone else here, I used to like keynote gold speech, but don't care for it much anymore.
The problem I have found with the realspeak synths is that they aren't nearly as responsive as I would have liked. I like Daniel, Samantha, and Tom, but they are not nearly as snappy as eloquence. And don't get me started on espeak, I hate, hate, hate it! Some people love it because it is way too robotic for my liking.
I do like the heather voice, but that's the only one from that particular company of which I like.
So all in all, eloquence for me. If realspeak was more responsive, I'd use it more.
Be nice if they added a voice inflection option to Eloquence.
NVDA's Eloquence has it, but that's not exactly legal.
Everyone has it, so who cares anymore?
I'm not a nvda user, because I personally don't like it, but it's just one of those things.
I use NVDA, at times, not only cause it does some things better than my other screen reader does, but cause, if my other screen reader crashes, it's nice to have a backup, so I can still use my computer.
Nobody using Vocalizer expressive. I like those voices. They are the realspeak voices only a lot more responsive.
They sound weird to me.
@post 19, it is a dectalk addons for NVDA.
I like all the synthetick synths. Eloquence, dolphin orpheus and espeak.
The synthetick synths have got another advantage for us who speak another language.Espeak and orpheus when we choose Greek we can read both Greek and English with the same voice.
Now try to read some English with the Greek voice from vocalizer or loquendo and you won't understand anything.
Nikos
Lolz, like 3 people in this thread mentioned they like E Speak, doesn't
that say how gross it is? Eloquence is the only logical option. Kid
annoying when someone uses the open source aspect of the synth to
justify why it's better. No, if it doesn't come across your ears like a
cheese greater with a frog in it's throat, I'd say it's a reasonable synth.
And those the people not on here that have even said eloquence is old
and slow, I just say, whatttttt?
Of course, the majority is always right.
I use Eloquence most of the time. However, for variety while using Jaws I use either Ivona voices which I purchased when the company sold to consumers or a voice from Cepstral. In my view Cepstral's voices don't sound nearly as good as Ivona's with two exceptions. The Cepstral voices Dallas with a Texas accent and Belle who has a U.S. southern drawl are the best-sounding Cepstral voices in my opinion. When using NVDA at home, I use the Acapela for NVDA voices. I love having NVDA read via Acapela voices, so purchasing that was well worth the money!
Recently I have been using the Acapela voices with NVDA. I think they are good value for money.
I miss that speech demo on the web with the valley girl voice.