Category: accessible Devices
When y'all are listening to a book, which speech do you mostly use?
My consistent synthesizer is eloquence read. I'm not so sure about using him for a entire book though.
How do some of these alternative synthesizers do with dialogue? Does it sound pretty natural?
I use eloquence read. All. the. time. For me, it's perfect, faster than an audio book, better than the annoying voices some of them have, and it's way faster, too.
Of course, I've used eloquence read for years, so that might play a factor.
Well, for Openbook, I usually have used the Eloquence voices (or they're something similar to it), but I do have some RealSpeak voices that I learned came with it, so I'm using those now. So far, my favorite synthesizers to read something (that I would get if possible), would be RealSpeak (mainly UK Daniel and US Tom), and the Dectalk voices with Paul, Betty, Harry, and all them. I wouldn't say either of the two synthesizers sound as human as I've heard compared to some others, but they sound pretty close, to me anyway.
ArtRock, I wonder if that is the deal with me. I've used Read since I started out on the internet, so I'm so use to him.
Reid all the way. I can read a book with that at about 70% on jaws now, which is pretty fast. Now you tell me, was the person who claimed they could read braille faster than jaws at 75% lying? I personally think so, lol.
I also use Reed, but prefer the old DecTalk hardware speech over anything else.
He is fast and efficient, but he can be a bit robotic and annoying. I am using him now though, and it's good for what is it out of all the other voices, but it's sometimes irritating. It's bad enough to listen to him all the time, worse when classmates decide to talk like robots.
I mostly use read, but prefer keynote gold, voice overs alex, or VW paul. Absolutely can not stand dektalk voices.
Keynote gold? I can't stand Keynote gold.
I'm the only person that uses jfw shelly.. everytime someone heres my computer they are like wtf and I'm like yo its shelly all the other voices sound so computerish
Yeah, I never liked Shelly much myself, so, I don't use her.
I guess that you are not the only person to use Shelly because I do too. She is so great when I switch to Latin American Spanish. I also like the Glen voice better than Reed, and I absolutely hate Bobby, Rocco, and Sandy. I like dectalk and neospeech, realspeak, loquendo... Cepstral voices are terrible, though. These are like head cold Dianne, forget everything Laurence, blow away Amy, and broken radio Callie.
Ugh. I can't stand Eloquence with Window-Eyes, much less for reading for pleasure. In fact the only reason I use Eloquence at all for Window-Eyes is because it's got the fastest response rate of all the synthesizers I use. And while I don't dislike the Dectalk voices I wouldn't want to listen to them all day. But if it weren't for the response rate I wouldn't bother with Eloquence at all since the voice quality leaves a lot to be desired as far as I'm concerned. And in no way would I use it to read for pleasure. I tried it once. Never again.
I use eloquence read on my windows computers, but on my mac i use Alex which is so much better. a little hard to find the perfect balance for reading, but with him sounding so human it makes it easier for me to read long periods of time.
Well if I had a Mack I would probably use Alex as well.
Was wondering about that. Just from demos, Alex sounds like a voice anyone could tolerate. Having to use an Accent when on a hangover is ... um brutal. For any of you don't go back that far consider yourselves fortunate.
While I do love Braille I am finding there are things speech does faster, especially if you're doing something else with your hands like writing down notes on something, or eating food, or doing whatever. I've also learned with speech going I can do what people do in an office, when the speech goes rather than using Braille I can stand up / stretch / do calf raiser or knee bends or whatever, like sighted people do when still in view of their screen. So far I pretty much use Eloquence, though have tried some of the RealSpeak Solo Direct voices with JAWS. They tend to inflect in weird places.
I used to love Doubletalk speech when I had one.
I can not stand doubletalk speech.