Alex text-to-speech voice: absolutely stunning
Has anyone played around with the new (669MB!) Alex voice available in the text-to-speech section of the Speech preference pane? It's eerie how good it is: the first voice that's good enough for regular proofreading, though I think it sounds better a hair faster than the default speed. It's leagues better than the Cepstral David voice I paid $30 for last year. (
https://www.cepstral.com/demos/) BTW, Cepstral's engine is fully compatible with Leopard too, in case you like their voices better -- and they do have a much wider range than Apple does.
My favorite part is that Alex actually breathes audibly just before starting a new sentence! I couldn't figure out why it sounded so natural, then a friend pointed out the quick inhalation just before he reads each new sentence. Unreal!
It's not perfect: he makes more pronunciation mistakes than Cepstral David, but that's to be expected for v.1.0. I hope Apple will add a "Corrections" feature to the Speech preference pane to allow people to enter corrections, new words, and exceptions.
But it's still a home run for people who use text-to-speech!
My favorite part is that Alex actually breathes audibly just before starting a new sentence! I couldn't figure out why it sounded so natural, then a friend pointed out the quick inhalation just before he reads each new sentence. Unreal!
It's not perfect: he makes more pronunciation mistakes than Cepstral David, but that's to be expected for v.1.0. I hope Apple will add a "Corrections" feature to the Speech preference pane to allow people to enter corrections, new words, and exceptions.
But it's still a home run for people who use text-to-speech!
MacBook Pro, 15", 2.33GHz Intel, Mac OS X (10.5)
