Text to speech suggestions

[Aloke Prasad]

I'm looking for suggestions for an affordable TTS software that can read me
the newspapers' web sites. AT&T, IBM and Scansoft have TTS products that
sound great (based on their on-line demo's), but they are aimed at
commercial markets.

Any suggestions for good products for $100 or less?

Thanks.

 

[Sharon F]

I'm looking for suggestions for an affordable TTS software that can read me
the newspapers' web sites. AT&T, IBM and Scansoft have TTS products that
sound great (based on their on-line demo's), but they are aimed at
commercial markets.

Any suggestions for good products for $100 or less?

Thanks.

Scansoft's Standard package for Dragon Speaking is $99 and Essentials is
$59 (look under the "Personal & Home" heading for descriptions). Those
prices are for purchasing direct from the manufacturer. You may find better
prices at software stores (online or in the neighborhood).

Scansoft also distributes ViaVoice: Personal, Standard and Advanced are all
priced under $100.

www.scansoft.com

 

[Opinicus]

I'm looking for suggestions for an affordable TTS software that can
How about "Free"?
http://lebeausoftware.brinkster.net/software/agentcb.asp

It's a little program that uses MS Agent to read the contents of your
clipboard. I use it to help me proof-read material that I've written or
translated.

 

[Aloke Prasad]

Scansoft's Standard package for Dragon Speaking is $99 and Essentials is
$59 (look under the "Personal & Home" heading for descriptions). Those
prices are for purchasing direct from the manufacturer. You may find better
prices at software stores (online or in the neighborhood).

Scansoft also distributes ViaVoice: Personal, Standard and Advanced are all
priced under $100.

These are voice recognition programs. Some of these have some basic
text-to-speech capabilities, but not as good as the best quality voices.
For example, good quality voice from AT&T comes on CD and takes up 600+
megs!

That quality of TTS is not bundled with ViaVoice or Dragon Nat Speaking,
which are primarily voice recognition software.

 

[Aloke Prasad]

How about "Free"?
http://lebeausoftware.brinkster.net/software/agentcb.asp

It's a little program that uses MS Agent to read the contents of your
clipboard. I use it to help me proof-read material that I've written or
translated.

That page is opening up recursively on my system (IE6). In any case, XPPro
has a default voice "Microsoft Sam" which sounds horrible. Is there any way
to add better voices to XP? I'm sure Agent uses these voices (controlled by
Control Panel -> Speech)

 

[Opinicus]

That page is opening up recursively on my system (IE6).

Try this one:
http://www.lebeausoftware.org/ and look for AgentCB under
"Products/Applications".

It's really very good and you can't beat the price.

In any case,
XPPro has a default voice "Microsoft Sam" which sounds horrible. Is
there any way to add better voices to XP? I'm sure Agent uses these
voices (controlled by Control Panel -> Speech)

I don't think so. The voice is programmed into the particular Agent
character. Peedy sounds different from Merlin sounds different from Dogbert
and so on. There are lots of free characters available on the
internet--though some of them are pretty dire.

In order to work, AgentCB needs Microsoft Agent installed:

http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/

 

[Carolyn]

I'm looking for suggestions for an affordable TTS software that can read me
the newspapers' web sites. AT&T, IBM and Scansoft have TTS products that
sound great (based on their on-line demo's), but they are aimed at
commercial markets.

Any suggestions for good products for $100 or less?

Thanks.

Try Read Please which can be found here
http://www.readplease.com/rpplus.php

They have both a free and a paid version and I have been wanting to try it
myself since I have read good things about it.
Send me an email if you like the program.
Carolyn