Type (on keyboard) to Speak Program

Hi,

A ham friend of mine has trouble with his voice at times. I suggested
using a program that converts what you type to speech. I offered to
search for such a program (I'm willing to pay for it), but I found a lot of
text to speech programs that read text such as email, documents, etc. and
"speaks" their contents.

What my friend wants is a program that allows him to type a sentence,
then press Enter (or click a button) and the sentence is "spoken". Also,
he can repeat this action with the next sentence(s) without erasing the
previous sentence first in order to type the next sentence.

I found "ESPEAK" V1.48.04 that is just right for "typing to speak",
but the speech is not always clear (understandable). I tried all the
"voices". Note: This was freeware. I am willing to pay for a
program that has clearer speech.

Please don't suggest Morse code (CW), RTTY, PSK31, etc.

Thank You in advance, John N3AOF

wrote:
Hi,

A ham friend of mine has trouble with his voice at times. I suggested
using a program that converts what you type to speech. I offered to
search for such a program (I'm willing to pay for it), but I found a lot of
text to speech programs that read text such as email, documents, etc. and
"speaks" their contents.

What my friend wants is a program that allows him to type a sentence,
then press Enter (or click a button) and the sentence is "spoken". Also,
he can repeat this action with the next sentence(s) without erasing the
previous sentence first in order to type the next sentence.

I found "ESPEAK" V1.48.04 that is just right for "typing to speak",
but the speech is not always clear (understandable). I tried all the
"voices". Note: This was freeware. I am willing to pay for a
program that has clearer speech.

Please don't suggest Morse code (CW), RTTY, PSK31, etc.

Thank You in advance, John N3AOF


I haven't played with this stuff too much, but
I can give a kind of warning.

Microsoft has some free voices, but they're about
the same quality as some of the early voices 20 years ago.

So when I read the advertising content here, and I
see the word "Mary", I go "Uh oh" because that would
be one of the Microsoft voices.

http://www.bytecool.com/realtime.htm

What you want, is to combine a product, with a voice
purchased elsewhere. You can "test" with Mary if you
want, but I would recommend a second shopping trip to
track down a better third-party SAPI voice. As my
suspicion is, a shareware like this, just drives the
Microsoft Engine, and the engine needs a better voice.

Now, if the engine itself, the model is lacking,
perhaps it isn't possible to make a decent voice
under any circumstances. In which case, this "cheapskate"
approach will have to be dumped, and another product
tested.

Perhaps sites that advertise "assistive technologies"
would have something better sounding. But just about
anything I could get my hands on, sounded like something
Apple provided years ago ("Marvin" comes to mind, a
high pitched robot voice).

The big money in speech synthesis, is automatic voice
systems for business. And of course businesses can be
dinged per usage, or any other kind of pricing model
you can imagine. So the people making these products,
know they aren't going to get rich selling to
the "little people". Meaning the more effective
products are out of reach.

I think by now, someone could have given Stephen Hawking
a better voice, but he probably likes what he's got
and has no interest in promoting some TTS company.

*******

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis

Paul

I wrote such a program that uses any voice loaded on the PC.
What I found is that there are many commercial voices that are much
better than MS. But some of the more recent voices are not too bad.

For starters, try "AT&T Natural" Voices but there are many more.
There are voices with all kind of different accents: British, Australian
etc.

Here is one link.
http://wizzardsoftware.com/text-to-speech-sdk.php
I know nothing about this company as when I purchased AT&T voices it was
about 10 years ago.

Hopefully when loaded on the PC your text to speech program will
recognize them. Or maybe check out the provided text to speech program
that sometimes comes with the voices.

Expect to pay $250.

You will find, and my program made these corrections, that many words
are pronounced incorrectly because the speech engine does not understand
grammar. For example is it I read (past tense) the book or I read
(present tense) the book. The miner took the lead. He led or took the
metal.

Prompter wrote:
I wrote such a program that uses any voice loaded on the PC.
What I found is that there are many commercial voices that are much
better than MS. But some of the more recent voices are not too bad.

For starters, try "AT&T Natural" Voices but there are many more.
There are voices with all kind of different accents: British, Australian
etc.

Here is one link.
http://wizzardsoftware.com/text-to-speech-sdk.php
I know nothing about this company as when I purchased AT&T voices it was
about 10 years ago.

Hopefully when loaded on the PC your text to speech program will
recognize them. Or maybe check out the provided text to speech program
that sometimes comes with the voices.

Expect to pay $250.

You will find, and my program made these corrections, that many words
are pronounced incorrectly because the speech engine does not understand
grammar. For example is it I read (past tense) the book or I read
(present tense) the book. The miner took the lead. He led or took the
metal.

I hope these products offer both male and female
voices, so the user has a choice.

In this sample, the pacing of the TTS is a bit off,
on the last sentence. And the interface on this one,
is the usual "Notepad" style playback (highlight text
and then have it converted). I didn't notice a
selector so that a male voice could be used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-KNUMoAIU

I wish they all had demo videos like this.

*******

And the article here, strikes me as "same old same old".
A million leads, lots of testing, lots of research to do.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4...r-personal-use

Paul

All the source I used to see had both male and female voices.

Depending on hearing loss, male may be better than female and visa
versa. My father had problems with female voices but could totally
understand male voices.

Also, the accent can help make the voice more understandable since it
seems that the accent voices enunciate better. At least to me they do.
It is all personal preference.

All the voices I used played well for simple text to speech and for use
with Microsoft Agents like Merlin. Also, there are many non-MS Agents
out there to play with.

When you really get into it the speech engine supports bookmarks that
can tailor the audio output including grammar and spelling out words and
much more. But the extent of capability is built into the voice so some
voices do not do grammar well while others are full featured.
I never could figure out ahead of time which ones did what.

Word highlighting is tricky and needed the full CPU capability.
I locked down everything while the speech engine was running since
simply moving the form will cause all heck to break loose.



I hope these products offer both male and female
voices, so the user has a choice.

In this sample, the pacing of the TTS is a bit off,
on the last sentence. And the interface on this one,
is the usual "Notepad" style playback (highlight text
and then have it converted). I didn't notice a
selector so that a male voice could be used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-KNUMoAIU

I wish they all had demo videos like this.

*******

And the article here, strikes me as "same old same old".
A million leads, lots of testing, lots of research to do.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4...r-personal-use


Paul

SNIP
I haven't played with this stuff too much, but
I can give a kind of warning.

Microsoft has some free voices, but they're about
the same quality as some of the early voices 20 years ago.

So when I read the advertising content here, and I
see the word "Mary", I go "Uh oh" because that would
be one of the Microsoft voices.

http://www.bytecool.com/realtime.htm

What you want, is to combine a product, with a voice
purchased elsewhere. You can "test" with Mary if you
want, but I would recommend a second shopping trip to
track down a better third-party SAPI voice. As my
suspicion is, a shareware like this, just drives the
Microsoft Engine, and the engine needs a better voice.

Hi Paul,

This "ESPEAK" program uses SAPI voice from Microsoft, I forgot
to mention.

Thanks, John

For starters, try "AT&T Natural" Voices but there are many more.
There are voices with all kind of different accents: British, Australian
etc.

Here is one link.
http://wizzardsoftware.com/text-to-speech-sdk.php
I know nothing about this company as when I purchased AT&T voices it was
about 10 years ago.

Hi Prompter,

I never got a reply from wizzardsoftware.com regarding what I was looking
for.
John

For starters, try "AT&T Natural" Voices but there are many more.
There are voices with all kind of different accents: British, Australian
etc.

Here is one link.
http://wizzardsoftware.com/text-to-speech-sdk.php
I know nothing about this company as when I purchased AT&T voices it was
about 10 years ago.

Hi Prompter,

I never got a reply from wizzardsoftware.com regarding what I was looking
for.
John


UPDATE:

I found "NextUp Talker". It does just what I want. It costs $99.95 and
includes two AT&T voices, "Mike" and "Crystal". Note: Each "voice"
file is over 500MBs. I sure am glad I don't have dial-up anymore.

John

A ham friend of mine has trouble with his voice at times. I suggested
using a program that converts what you type to speech. I offered to
search for such a program (I'm willing to pay for it), but I found a lot of
text to speech programs that read text such as email, documents, etc. and
"speaks" their contents.

What my friend wants is a program that allows him to type a sentence,
then press Enter (or click a button) and the sentence is "spoken". Also,
he can repeat this action with the next sentence(s) without erasing the
previous sentence first in order to type the next sentence.

I found "ESPEAK" V1.48.04 that is just right for "typing to speak",
but the speech is not always clear (understandable). I tried all the
"voices". Note: This was freeware. I am willing to pay for a
program that has clearer speech.

UPDATE:

I found "NextUp Talker". It does just what I want. It costs $99.95 and
includes two AT&T voices, "Mike" and "Crystal". Note: Each "voice"
file is over 500MBs. I sure am glad I don't have dial-up anymore.

I gave it to my ham friend. Note: He gave much more than
$99.95 worth of ham gear in the past.

John