[DM-MUG] VoiceOver Improved in Leopard

[Matthew W.]

Thanks for the info, Bill. I like the options for British and other  
accents. We'll soon see if the new VoiceOver is a true improvement  
over 10.4. Apple's modern lexicon does seem to be more complete.  
Cepstral knew how to say 'iPod' and 'iLife' well enough, and handled  
'virtualization' better (David vs. Victoria), but it didn't know  
'NVIDIA'. I do like the range of Cepstral voices better than Apple's.  
Most of Apple's voices, though understandable, seem to be more  
novelty than useful. Each has its strengths.

Mw

On Aug 9, 2006, at 8:44 PM, Bill Davis wrote:

> Something your friend might want to look at is Cepstral's voices.   
> Try them out on their demos page http://www.cepstral.com/demos/
>
> The David and Diane voices are excellent.  So is William.  Most of  
> the rest are MUCH better than the ones Apple ships.  They also have  
> ones for foreign languages, too.
>
> They've also got a few specialty voices.  I bought the one with a  
> Scottish accent ("Duncan") because after all, a computer named  
> "Mac" is Scottish, right? I suppose I should've bought "William",  
> though...
>
>  - Bill
>
>
> On Aug 9, 2006, at 2:41 PM, Matthew W. wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> Regarding the WWDC keynote VoiceOver Text-to-speech improvements...
>>
>> Last year, a blind friend of mine, frustrated with Windows and the  
>> high price of screen-reading software, switched over to the Mac in  
>> a big way. He bought 3 of them and has had very positive comments.  
>> He just sent me his opinion of Leopard's updated VoiceOver.
>>
>>> The Vista voice is nothing new, but rather a replay of the old.   
>>> Microsoft Mike is better, but yet not as good as the new MAC  
>>> voice.  The new MAC voice speaks the words very clearly and  
>>> speaks them in a natcheral (sic) way, the best computer generated  
>>> voice I have ever heard.
>>
>> BTW, if you haven't seen the WWDC keynote, catch it here:
>>
>> <http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/aug_2006/event/index.html>
>>
>> It's about 1h 30m long, so sit in a comfy chair.
>>
>> Matthew Wheeler
>> Acting Vice President
>> Des Moines Macintosh Users Group
>> http://www.dmmug.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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