Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Are there any human sounding computer voices for the Mac?

I've always assumed that it would take improvements in the Apple speech technology, not just new voice parameters sets, to make more-human voices, and that because the voices didn't sound human, Apple gave us all those "Novelty" choices, like Deranged and Trinoids. The Novelty choices, not intended to sound real, were no doubt easier, and were good to use for showing off what the technology could do and avoiding showing off what it couldn't.

So I'm curious, as you are, if there are better choices for Apple's speech these days.
 
I wish that Apple would quietly retire their ancient TTS engine and license the Loquendo stuff. Their voices don't even sound mechanical much of the time.
 
Some of the more recent voices (Agnes, Bruce, Victoria) sound better than the older 1993 PlainTalk voices...The latest addition, Vicki, sounds very human (though a bit too breathy) to me.
 
iMeowbot said:
I wish that Apple would quietly retire their ancient TTS engine and license the Loquendo stuff. Their voices don't even sound mechanical much of the time.
Click to expand...

WOW! See this is what I am talking about! Loquendo's voices are AMAZING! Just check out this sound file:

http://www.loquendo.com/en/audio/simonexample1.mp3

You can hardly tell he's computerised. I hope... no I WISH Apple would implement something like this in Leopard.
 
Balli said:
WOW! See this is what I am talking about! Loquendo's voices are AMAZING! Just check out this sound file:

http://www.loquendo.com/en/audio/simonexample1.mp3

You can hardly tell he's computerised. I hope... no I WISH Apple would implement something like this in Leopard.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the voices are pretty real. You can tell here and there that they are fake but overall much better than the ones in Mac OS X.

Off topic but, are you in Waterloo Ontario?
 
http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/

This thing will compile on Linux, it is possible they could port it, but someone I doubt they will unless someone pays cash....

AT&T continuously invests in innovative speech technologies so that businesses worldwide can optimize interactions and achieve a better Return on Communications in terms of reach and efficiency. Examples of applications and services being optimized by AT&T Natural Voices' TTS Engine today include an e-mail reader that provides e-mail access over the phone; a real-time notification and alerting service; a system that converts ASCII text messages into wav files for broadcast over local area networks; text readers that provide greater accessibility to any content on an individual's computer; a voice-enabled directory search engine; and a VoiceXML development gateway.

AT&T Natural Voices' TTS Engine can uniquely support the addition of many languages to any and all applications, including U.S. English, German, Latin American Spanish, U.K. English, Parisian French, and many more foreign languages to come - always with the highest standards of quality and intelligibility.

All editions of the TTS engine include both a female and male U.S. English voice and support SAPI 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1, the SSML component of VoiceXML, and JSAPI interface standards.

One TTS engine supports multiple languages. The AT&T Natural Voices Desktop Text-to-Speech Engine offers some enhanced pronunciation features; for example, when the engine reads "Dr. Smith lives on Ocean Dr.", it can determine that the first "Dr." should be pronounced "doctor" and the second "Dr." should be pronounced "drive". In addition, all of the names of the FORTUNE 500 companies, numerous business-related terms and the names of international currencies have near-perfect pronunciations.

AT&T Natural Voices' TTS Engine is tremendously flexible. It can pronounce words exactly the way you want it to. The engine includes language- and voice-specific custom dictionaries that enable users to define the pronunciation of certain words. Users can also determine how the engine reads certain acronyms and abbreviations, and change the speaking rate, volume and voice.
Click to expand...
 
Do any of you use the computer voice thing on OS X? I tried it when I got my first OS X Powerbook but everyone else around me soon got bored of hearing me go "computer, get my mail" or whatever. All I could think about was Scotty in that Star Trek film where they go back in time to rescue Spock (can't remember which on it is).
 
IMHO the AT&T voices are seriously impressive -- the best I've heard spoken by a non-human. The MacOS X voices sound the same as the old MacOS 8.something voices I first heard back in 1999. Those AT&T ones would absolutely make things like VoiceOver much more useful.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back