Category: Geeks r Us
Probably the most human sounding voice that I have heard ever from a computer is the mac's voice over's Alex. What do u guys think?
Agreed.
Is there somewhere I can hear a sample of Alex? Lol, maybe someone can have him speak on their profile.
They should have one for windows.
I think the scansoft voices are pretty good. I also like ana by microsoft. I don't use the human sounding voices much on windows because they seem to be sluggish. I haven't tried alex but would be interested to know how much it slows down your system.
I could work on getting him onto my audio profile, I need to update it anyway.
You can hear a sample of the Mac voice Alex by visiting
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/reviews_of_speech_synths.html
To find the Alex sample, search for Leopard on the page.
also, some of acapela's offerings are quite good. Infovox 2.2 has just been added to NextUp's voices.
akapella voices are good, I use some of their paid for voices. as do I use a t and t and scansoft. A t and t charles is good, if a little formal, as is scansoft daniel. A t and t crystal is good too.
Blake, thanks for the website. Now I know what Alex sounds like! He reminds me of the Loquendo voices. It is a shame those aren't available for screen reader use.
I think Microsoft Sam is the most human sounding voice I've ever hearde on a computer! He gets me all hot and botherd. Now, I have to clean the keyboard again; am so sticky!
-Dave
um...wow. ok then dave. uh...yeah. have fun with that. the ATNT voices do sound really human codiac.
Microsoft Sam sounds so human that it's a depressed robot.
Oh my!!!!
I just checked out that site, and WOW!!! I Wish I'd asked for a mac for my birthday aa few months ago!!!
That's amazing!!!
Yes, a depressed robot. Ever meet Marvin the Paranoid Android? He's on the space ship Heart of Gold, of Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. hahah.
The most human sounding voices I've heard are scansoft Daniel and Jane. Most of the scansoft voices are good. I've also got a couple of the akapella voices, which are good, except for aran. I don't like the original voices of microsoft sam, mary and Mike, though and think the nvda voice is rubbish and so is the voice for hal/supernova.
lol dave, rotfl I think marvin was better. Microsoft Sam sounds terible! Anyway, a friend of mine's jaws has a very human sounding voice, can't remember the version he has. Is there any website where you could download these voices to try them out? Or would you need a higher version of jaws? Smiles
never seen hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, but i've been told I should.
The Real Speak voices work with jaws 8 and they come with the program cd when you buy it.
Music Master, I recommend you read the Hitch Hiker books, rather than see the movie, but I digress. LOL.
post 10, they are, and will work with any screenreader that supports sapi5 voices, hal and jfw come to mind here - there not that expencive if I remember correctly.
post 16: not a flame, but i'd just like to point out that hal does come with 4 voices:
carol and allan are meant for new users who have only just started using a screenreader and want a human like voice to speak to them.
Dave and andy are more for speed reading where the speed that the user has means that the naturalness of the voice becomes less important; fyi, they handle fast speeds very well actually, with the new set of voices beeing able to go upto 1000 instead of 700 - try putting elequence at that speed (its measured differently btw) and it'll start clicking all the time - these don't.
Infact, if its naturalness your after, I think hal / supernova now come with the loquendo voices, along with relspeak and accapella.
I've heard that Cepstral Frank sounds human, but I do't think it does. Anyone think this?
i use a mac and alex is cool as heck now we have to find him a girl. lol lol lol.
as for Cepstral Frank, he's kind of cheesy. They do have better sounding ones.
really? like which ones?
And yeah, hmmmmm what girl would go with alex's voice. hmmm.
I think the most human sounding voices i've heard come ut of a computer I hear on my media player, ventrillo and skype... just my thoughts. :P
Hahah yeah. Unless somebody is using a voice changer or the connection is bad, the voices coming out of my computer sound pretty human.
Personally I like loquendo Dave, and if you were wondering, yes they do work with jfw. you just need to use sapi 5, and may have to edit the sapi synth config in the jfw folder to get them to stop artifacting. They also work very nicely for creating audio books. i use susan for reading the newspaper, and she sounds cool for that. Also, if the material is of a serious nature, I'll use cepstral Cally for reading it, if its sad, I'll use cepstral David, and if its angry i'll use cepstral shouty.
Can you get rid of artifacts in real speak? I have it set ton a certain speed so it sounds the best. I forgot what it is at the moment.
I'm uncertain if you can, but again, just edit the jfw sapi5 ini file, and you might be albe to. You will need to know what the settings are for a certain synth. For realspeak solo its 22.5 khz, 16 bit, mono. For all the cepstral ones accept for calli, its 16 khz 16 bit mono, calli is 22 khz 16 bit mono. For loquendo, its 16 haz, 16 bit, mono as well. Hope this helps. Yes, some voices do artifact when you speed them up, and some when you slow them down! lol. I use infovox 230 from Telia Promoter, and when you slow it down all the way, the thing sounds like its being vocoded through a very scary piano or something. lol! I use that one on british english because the american english cannot pronounce some words right, and I don't want to have to do so much dictionary editting. It might be good for encripting what you are saying in an email though... hmmm. I personally like that synth because it is pretty human sounding, and is very hard for others to understand. I also like flextalk as well. The only problem with that one is that if you have it reading a long passage, it will crash your speech program. I've had it crahs in Kurzweil v 11, and in jaws. Not sure about nvda or hal though. I'll have to try it with those. lol.
artifacting? what's that? I do like the thing about having different voices for different emotions.
Yeah what is artifacting. And what files do you edit, I'm all new to this editing junk.
I like the neo speech voices myself.
Alex for the Mac is a good voice, but boy! does he use up a lot of wram!
Same goes with the ScanSoft voices and the others listed... They use up more wram than say, Eloquence. Also, when you slow ScanSoft Tom down all the way, it sounds like he's about to die. No, I'm not kidding!
Jeffrey
To post 5 brandon, alex with voice over consumes 107 megs of ram on my machine. However without alex and with say fred it uses between 13 and 22 megs.
To post 11.
.............................. ...... ..... ..... ..... .....
I really don't mind how many megs of ram it uses. I guess the only reason I may consider switching to a different voice, is so that if I use virtual box, my mac doesn't go nuts.
You should switch period. You really need tolearn hw to manage your computing resources because they can be invaluable once you realize that you ahve an important task to occomplish, you will be thankful i told you that.
I'lll switch to a different voice if i need to. For now, I'm sticking with Alex.
Ok, I switched to fred, when I went in to ubuntu today. I noticed, wait for it, wait for it, no change whatsoever. If anything, my fan came on a lot sooner, and I didn't see any faster times on booting, opening anything, petty much anything. I did notice one sight thing, and that was that I could switch what window I was in a little quicker.
I love Alex. what an amazing voice! I used to think Loquendo and Realspeak were great until I heard the Mac speak. Man oh man. I just wish he knew Greek so I wouldn't have to go nuts trying to find a Greek synth that works with Leopard. OH, ESpeak is cool too. It properly recognises the tonos (accent mark) which really comes in handy for lessons and the like.