Text to speech - a general overviw

By C.L Hsieh

TextAloud With AT&T Natural Voices (Windows Software)
http://www.naturalreaders.com/


Listed above are just two examples of popular text to speech software on the market, some of which I'll be returning to for review at a later date. But today, I would like to talk about voice engines.

I think a great many of you will agree with me when I say that voices are very important; they can give impressions of intelligence where it is not due, and give impression of stupidity where it is undeserved. When applied to the field of assistive technology, the above statement is even more salient. A good voice engine can make a B grade software look like a state of the art marvel. Where as a bad voice engine (like Microsoft Sam) can make a state of the art software look like something out of 1978 Battlestar Gallectica returning to haunt us.

Here is a news flash: most of companies producing text to speech software do not develop their own voice engine, that is because most voice engines are developed along the line of Microsoft SAPI 4 and SAPI 5, and it does not take more than 10 companies producing voice engines to saturate the market.

Thanks to my little obsession about making my over glorified Pentium 4 into a obedient wife with sexy voice telling me how much she worships me, read my books to me before I retire to bed, and proofread my writings;I am proud to announce that I have invested time and real money to test just about every voice engine on the market so my readers can just take my words for it.

Ivona Voice Engine http://www.ivona.com/helpVoice.php
Clarity: 5/5
Punctuation 3/5
Pronounciation 4/5
Compatibility 4.5/5
Overall 4.5/5.


AT&T Voice Engines http://www.naturalreaders.com/sample.htm
Clarity: 3/5
Punctuation 3.5/5
Pronounciation 3/5
Compatibility 4.5/5
Overall 3/5.

Realspek Voice Engine from Nuance . http://www.nextup.com/
Clarity: 3/5
Punctuation 4/5
Pronounciation 35/5
Compatibility 4.5/5
Overall 3.5/5.


Neospeech Voice engine http://www.naturalreaders.com/sample.htm
Clarity: 3/5
Punctuation 4/5
Pronounciation 3.5/5
Compatibility 4.5/5
Overall 3.5/5.

Acapella Voice engine. http://www.naturalreaders.com/sample.htm
Clarity: 3/5
Punctuation 4/5
Pronounciation 4/5
Compatibility 2/5
Overall 3.5/5.

Cepstral Voice Engine. http://www.nextup.com/
Clarity: 2.5/5
Punctuation 4/5
Pronounciation 2.5/5
Compatibility 4/5
Overall 3/5.

Acapella has the best quality second only to Ivona Voice Engine, but they tend to be software specific and will not work cross platform the way Ivona, Neospeech, and AT&T would.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CoWriter and the Subscription model:

The CoWriter Universal:  The Subscription model: When it comes to Word Prediction Software; none is, perhaps, better marketed than CoWriter by Don Johnston. Like Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance is for speech recognition, CoWriter by Don Johnston is often the first thing an AT professional think of when Word Prediction is being discussed.  In case there is still anyone out there that doesn’t know what a Word prediction software is, it’s what we often use when we type on the smartphone and other mobile devices. The little bar above the smartphone keyboard that guesses what we are trying to type is called, Word Prediction; and before the advent of the smart devices and their touch screens, Word Prediction Software had already been widely used by people with disabilities to make typing less of a pain. I first saw CoWriter on ABC News in early 2009, and its selling point was the copious vocabularies it is capable of predicting. It could be used by anyone from K12 to Po...
Read more

Simple Speech, affordable AAC software for Windows Platform

http://www.palsoftwaredesigns.com/ When I first came across their website, I was a little apprehensive, because it has neither the company's physical address nor telephone number. It only has a paypal sign for credit card payment, the name of its CEO, Jose A. Oritz, and a rather vague statement that the company is based in Brooklyn New York. True, many small companies that produce softwares aiming at niche market tend to use this model to minimize operating expenses - and trust me AAC software definitely qualifies as a niche market, Paypal payment and direct download afterwards, no mess, no fuss. But then, most companies do at least give their physical address and telephone number to give an impression of legitimacy, even fraudulent websites give that much. So readers cannot blame me for being over cautious. To cut a long story short, I took a chance, and bought a copy for testing. It works very much like proloquo2go from assistware and dynavox's mighty mo; it also comes wi...
Read more

The transformers come!

                                             While there has been little exciting news in the realm of high-tech consumer electronics other than the soul-eating-time-devouring-productivity-killing Pokemon Go sometimes masquerading as therapeutic app for people with agoraphobia, and, more generally, a cure for most Americans' aversion to outdoor exercises; the iPad got faster and bigger, and not to be outdone, Samsung sported an enormous 20 inch Android tablet called Samsung View; The bloated Android tablets, of course, have been with us since 2011, with Viewsonic's Smart Monitor and HP's all-in-one Android Computer. However, with the popularity of carbon fibre and other metal alloys, there has been a welcoming move by the Durable Medical Equipment (DME) industry to make traditionally bulky and heavy devices more mobile and portable. ...
Read more