quote:
Originally posted by Dr.Benway
Art, I am looking forward to your post with the promised critique of the various TTS voices you've tried. [:p]
Raymond,
Sorry for the delay. Trying to finish one of those horrible projects that tend to occupy a lot of my waking time called WORK! It seems to interfere with life's pleasures! Anyhow....
Here's what I found:
TTS voices
This is my personal take on demo voices that I've listened to from
the various distributor's sites. These views are just my personal
opinion and are not meant to detract from or add to any company
listed. I am not affiliated with any TTS company listed in any way.
All voices tested were female.
For those that missed a previous post:
Acapela acquired Babel
Scansoft acquired Rhetorical
Voiceware & NeoSpeech have same Kate voice but sounds better from Voiceware for some reason.
Note: most TTS voices heard as a demo on site are usually not as
clear or good sounding as if they were residing on your personal
computer. This can be due to line noice, bandwidth considerations,
buffering, etc. (your actual mileage may vary)...
Aculab - rather high treble pitched
AT&T - Crystal - nice, smooth & clear
AT&T - Lauren- very nice, clear voice
Babel - Heather - very nice, soft, clear, sexy lisp type sound
Cepstral - Emily - nice, soft, smooth, calming voice.
Cepstral - Robin - nicely done child's voice
Elan (Sayso) - Laura - smooth
Elan (Tempo) - Mary - choppy, rather foreign sounding accent
Fonix (Faast) - rather slow, mellow, almost drug induced
IBM - Allison - perky, slightly nasal sounding
Loquendo - Susan - words seem slightly run-together
Loquendo - Elizabeth - lower pitch and slightly choppy
NeoSpeech - Kate - nice voice but inflection occurs on / with wrong words in sentence.
Nuance - Laurie Wood - nice but slightly muffled
Rhetorical - Jennifer - lower tone, very business-like
Scansoft - Jill - nice voice but has trouble with double L's (like Jill)
Voiceware Co. Ltd. - Kate - clear, crisp, very good
If anyone else has voices to add to this list by all means please contribute!