I agree with the comment about the new scansoft speech engines. They also
seem to forget when to pause at punctuation but leave random gaps at
inappropriate places instead. They're making it very difficult to convince
people that text-to-speech strategies might help with reading or proofing.
I've already suggested to TextHelp they go back to including previous
versions of scansoft voices until these problems are sorted out.
Ian Francis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Trott" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2006 9:22 AM
Subject: Text readers - voice quality Was Free text readers
> While on the subject of screen reading.
>
> I personally find the quality of the current SAPI voices far less clear
> than
> previoius versions.
>
> For example whereas the previous L&H version of Jane would pronounce a
> phrase
> like "quite different" very clearly with BBC like received pronounciation
> I
> find that the Scansoft version of Jane sounds more like "quidfferen" to me
> making it more difficult for users to detect errors. In fact, I find
> listening to
> large volumes of text with the more recent voices is much less pleasant.
>
> I have managed to persuade Claro Software to look at this and they
> promised
> to include the L&H version of Jane as an option in a future launch of
> Claro
> Read.
>
> Mick Trott
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