The Latest Ways To Talk (and Listen) To Your PC Read That Back To Me Eric Grevstad
When it's time to proofread or read back a document -- or if you'd like to have the morning's e-mails read to you while you're busy with something else --you'll find PC text-to-speech (TTS) applications have progressed far beyond the droning, robotic voices you may have heard from old demonstrations or Stephen Hawking's synthesizer.
Both Dragon NaturallySpeaking and ViaVoice include TTS capability, but users who want the most flexibility or most natural-sounding (though still computerized) voices available often rely on dedicated playback software. And there are new releases to report in this category, too -- specifically, last week's debut of Fonix Corp.'s iSpeak 3.0.
In addition to reading plain text files, the $50 iSpeak adds integration with Microsoft Word, letting users listen to documents or selected text from within Word itself without having to cut and paste or save a document in text format. The upgrade also offers e-mail reading for AOL and Outlook Express as well as Outlook 2000, and a new "Drag and Speak" desktop icon that launches iSpeak and reads Word, WordPerfect, Excel, or several other types of documents when you drop their icons there.
iSpeak 3.0 can subdivide and save documents as one- to 20-minute MP3 files for later handheld listening, and offers no fewer than 14 playback voices -- with Fonix's own SimplySpeaking "voice fonts," Roger and Jessica, joined by nine Fonix DECtalk formant-based voices, the AT&T Natural Voices Mike and Crystal, and Lucent Technologies' Articulator voice Basil.
If you'd like to sample TTS technology for free, experiment with even more digitized voices, or both, ReadPlease Corp. offers both free basic and $50 Plus versions of ReadPlease 2003, which can read any text copied to the Windows Clipboard (or to its own window if you prefer).
Both versions come with four Microsoft-supplied voices; the Plus edition, in addition to offering more flexible, VCR-like playback controls, works with both the 8KHz and higher-quality 16KHz AT&T Natural Voices voice fonts (available for an additional $25, including male and female 8KHz voices, plus $45 per additional voice). The latter offer your choice of German, French, British, and Latin American Spanish accents.
