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- iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21This is using the ATT Natural Voices - same type of demo here http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php - but this one is cool because of the "animation" :-)
- Maxpower2912, on 12/03/2008, -2/+20We all know that this program's sole purpose is to make us tech guys laugh when we make it say dirty sentences.
digg! - davidswelt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Latest tech from Scansoft is pretty good too (also Speechify from Speechworks, which they bought). I also like "Vicky" (comes with OS X), which uses variable units to do concatenative speech synthesis (old voices used diphones etc.). As for open source TTS, there is Festival, which is pretty good with the latest multisyn voices (check out the voices from the MBROLA project).
AT&T's efforts are gerat, but the result is not necessarily the best that's out there. Good results in the field depend on two things: great technology in linguistic analysis and in synthesis, and a lot of money to collect a big corpus of (in-domain) speech data. - udha, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14Stephen Hawking could really use this technology.
- kylerk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Go to the full website, and on the left there is a person that will talk to you. Press the tell me more.
But then try clicking on the character a few times. They will say some funny things to tell you to stop clicking on them, or to get back to work. - clumsyninja, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13I made here say: "I hate my ***** job."
- h198x, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9How about we all agree to ban the word "EVER" from all titles?
- nickandkeith, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9(Switch accent to "Dave US"): "The sex change was a success. Too bad about the voice."
- shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8wait you can use it for things other than that???
- hobophobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Good morning, would you like to [drink beer/eat pizza] with the [alien overlords/transdimensional entity known as Zizarathia] for breakfast?"
"Hello, I was just passing by and saw you bleeding all over the side walk. I just wanted you to know I think that's hot, and here's my number."
"Let me out of this damn thing. They won't feed or bathe me, and it smells like Four Eighty Sixes."
"wwwwwwww dot dot double dot double you com com double you double com com dot dot double digg ....... d i g g dot com" (or a variation thereof) - skillet2extreme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I actually like this website you provided better, because the inflection in the sentences seemed more natural, not just speeding through it and saying it wrong.
- gsmithEIDW, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Stephen Hawking has commented on this before, I believe whilst he realises there are better speech engines now, that the one he uses he has grown attatched to as have those who know him. He sees it as 'his' voice despite its shortcomings...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Festival.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There's festival.
- agentgonzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's not bad. On the same level as some of the good TTS engines that are out there (Rhetorical, Nuendo, Scansoft).
- camiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As a test I plugged davidswelt's post into both the original posts and the at&t research one. Both were pretty good although one of them said "OS X" and the other said "OS Ten".
In the past I've used TextAloud to read text I was studying at the same time I was reading it. Helped to get it to stick in my brain more than just reading it. Works pretty good for regular stuff, not so good for technicle books, I tried a chapter of a Java book and these things can't read a block of code in any usefull way. - Quarks, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Another great text-to-speech converter: http://demo.acapela-group.com/
- SadBeef, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If you are using firefox, go to tools>options>privacy>cookies> click exceptions, and block cookies from vhost.oddcast.com
voila! no more limit - bpvancouver, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4well, my 4 year old gets a kick out of hearing her say "poopy poopy pants. smelly poopy poopy pants".
- ReinMasamuri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3LMAO, I found an Easter egg.
Enter: "Well hello baby"
She licks her lips at the end - thundercleese, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Agreed. Add "Top 10" to the ban list also...
- TransmitThis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If Only I could get this for my own WebSite 15,000 for VHost is a tad too expensive :)
Then I would have Max Headroom in the corner of my Webpage
answering questions and making funny comments.
That would be great lol - Jorenko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4in·flec·tion (ĭn-flĕk'shən): Alteration in pitch or tone of the voice.
- jasdev, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Made her say "nice balls" but it sounded mechanical so i tried "nice, balls!" and i swear her eyes were looking downwards. it felt erie though, like the terminator in a girl suit flirting.
- daskalou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Anyone know if there is an open source version of TTS?
- tavisjohn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is old technology. AT&T True Voice is MUCH clearer and more realistic! I use that to convert E-Books into MP3 files for my MP3 player.
Here is a Demo of the AT&T True Voice technology. (Way better than this kids stuff. LOL)
http://www.speaktext.com/at/attvoicedemo.htm - da5id, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Persons who are mobility impaired sometimes have great difficulty in holding books, turning the pages, and trying to read the first part of each line in mass-market paperbacks. E-books and e-book readers such as Microsoft Reader go a long way towards ameliorating these problems. (The e-book industry claims that 80% of new books are published in electronic format.) However, the "rights and privileges" of most DRM protected e-books disable the "read aloud" features of all readers such as the one built-in Microsoft Reader. And even in the few e-books where the read aloud feature is enabled, the text to speech engine is *very* primitive -- again, Microsoft reader is an example. By comparison, this text to speech implementation (Oddcast) is amazing. Disabling the read aloud feature in most e-book readers provides little, if any, protection to the intellectual property holders. It is profoundly disappointing that this quantum leap forward in the use of technology to assist the disabled -- be they mobility impaired or blind -- it is unavailable to so many who could most benefit. In terms of DRM it appears very much like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
- JeFurry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The best (read: silliest!) thing to type into a speech synthesiser (at least, if you're familiar with a fairly common British phrase and parodied "country bumpkin" accents) is
"whale oil beef hooked."
It doesn't need a TTS synth. Just say it out loud. - romper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's funny to hear it say "eye ham sofa king wee todd did"... =)
- ReRunx5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You can take out the limit by blocking the cookies from vhost.oddcast.com (make sure that you have deleted the cookies from vhost.oddcast.com then block them)
- riflemann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Try plugging some english into it and selecting a french or german speaker. Genuine 'allo 'allo characters! (i wish)
- inkdeep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Bitch better have my money!" REMIX!
- Petronski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I can't get it to add a rising inflection to the end of a question.
I tried to have the male voices ask "how about a nice game of chess?"
No rising inflection. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if it's a bug. Questions are pretty important, though. - redlaser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3:DD i luv it wen she says "oooh obsessive are you" ,lolol
- pickybugger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Has anyone ever seen one of these that you can download? I'd love to use one in mix cd's and podcasts....
- dustonio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I like how you can select a different language, like Italian or German. I typed in an Italian phrase and selected a German voice to speak it...it sounded quite close to how a German (mis)pronounces Italian.
- Chaseb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have never had a woman say those things to me before. I think I'm in love!
- tangledweb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As far as I can see, the only change in the demo now from the dot com bubble era is that back then the animated woman looked like a trendy dot com employee and now she looks like a fortune 500 employee. I don't know if that is a coincidence, or a deliberate marketing target.
Here she is circa 2003
http://web.archive.org/web/20030415084335/http://vhost.oddcast.com/vhost_minisite/demos/tts/tts_example.html - deepcnn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5must be the san fran version ;-)
- wannous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1check this it is much more lifelike http://actor.loquendo.com/actordemo/default.asp?language=en
- odysseus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Have them say, "If a woodchuck could chuck wood, a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck."
- SadBeef, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it says that after the third time you make it say something. you can make it say anything you want
- kris2pe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think its great like reading the news 4 u! But I saw ads just like this before slightly annoying, it was about getting a degree on the net. Just annoying especially when your at your house alone & suddenly then someone talking out of no where. Scare the crap out of me!!!
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't know if 2003 qualifies as the "dot com bubble" seeing as the market had definitely crashed for dot coms by then - but point well taken.
- slantyyz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1While the tech is novel, this is old. Oddcast had a similar demo 5 years ago that was all over the Internet. Back then you could even customize the look of the avatar to make him/her look like you and then send a bookmarkable link to your friends and hear the avatar speak. There were even some celebrity voices like famous baseball players, etc. saying goofy things.
The ATT TTS, while being one of the better TTS systems out there, still sounds like a computer. ATT's TTS is also not new. - superfunkypants, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To be fair... "I have ever heard" is not so bad, since it is personal and probably true.
Most of the time people make titles like "The Most Lifelike Text-to-Speech Applet EVER!" That gets on my nerves. - ThisGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm sure I've heard better.
- ecchichuu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2My thoughts exactly. No digg.
- devilish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Leeeeroy Jenkins!
(works pretty well) -
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