I haven't used the newer kind of synthesizers to any extent but Eloquence, compared with the small amount I've used some newer synthesizers, pronounces the most words correctly without correction.  I used Dectalk a lot before Eloquence and Eloquence is more accurate out of the box.  For whatever reason, that is my experience.

Gene

On 1/30/2023 1:49 PM, Travis Siegel wrote:

Oh, and I wanted to comment on the dictionary corrections of voices.  I think you'd be surprised if you checked the dictionary entries, and/or the voice source.  I think you'll find there's way more word corrections than you'd otherwise think, regardless of the synth you're using.

Often times, there's built-in dictionaries that aren't accessible to the end user that change pronunciations without the end user even being aware those entries exist.  English is a complicated language, so this isn't really a surprise.  Add to that, the existence of several different dialects, and you run into the case where the developer of a particular synth thinks a word should be pronounced one way, and a user from another part of the country hears that as the wrong pronunciation, so that complicates things too.

Never mind accents from different parts of the world.

On 1/30/2023 12:47 PM, Gene wrote:

If you tell me how to get and use Reed, I may try it, but I simply don't believe you can make E-Speak sound enough like NVDA and perform enough like it at fast speech rates to be anywhere near satisfactory to someone who wants NVDA.

When I set the speech rate to 56, which is slower than I listen with Eloquence but is getting to be reasonably fast, speech is annoyingly choppy and much harder to understand than Eloquence, even when Eloquence is set to read at much faster rates.

I haven't tested this, but I would be very surprised if E-Speak pronounces nearly as many words correctly, without dictionary correction, as Eloquence.

Unless you have significantly redesigned E-speak, I am very skeptical of your claim.  How can we try Reed and/or send a recording of E-speak reading at the speed of 56 and perhaps a sample of it speaking somewhat faster. 

You may have persuaded one listener, but one listener isn't at all representative of how others may react.

Gene

On 1/30/2023 11:28 AM, Gene via groups.io wrote:

I haven't given any thought to what you are suggesting and I don't have an opinion.  But I have never, and you have often said things like, this synthesizer, or these changes, sound like Eloquence, found any statements from anyone of the sort to be true. 

Gene

On 1/30/2023 9:38 AM, Josh Kennedy wrote:

hi,

Last night I did something I thought impossible. A friend of mine is, and was, a user of eloquence tts for many years. Then I showed him the changes I made to espeak, asking him what tts I was using. He had to pause for a second before answering, espeak. I then asked him if he liked the much improved espeak. He sai that he did. After I helped him set the variant to Reed, set inflection to 30, lower the pitch by a small amount, he was quite happy with espeak. He also complained that the reason he still uses Jaws is because jaws has a bunch of features NVDA does not have. I told him you can find most of those features in NVDA addons. He complained that Jaws is nice because it gives you everything in one package already there. so therefore my suggestions are these. 

1. Instead of the addons manager putting you onto a website and you have to go find the addons, please make it more like how window-eyes did things. Add a web scraper to the addons manager that will go out to both:

https://addons.nvda-project.org/index.en.html

and also:

https://nvda-addons.org/
and

https://github.com/BabbageCom/objEnhancer

scrape those sites for all addons, their descriptions and download links. Put them in a list view with checkboxes. have their descriptions in a read only edit box and an install button and uninstall buttons beside the edit box. This will make it easier for new users to find and install the addons they want, even installing multiple addons if they choose. You could even filter addons by type of addon, if its a voice addon like vocalizer or an addon that just adds new features you want? If its vocalizer it will let you download the addon but its still up to you to purchase it. 

2. Offer two NVDA download options, NVDA basic, and NVDA advanced or NVDA full packages. NVDA advanced or full would be much larger than the basic NVDA because it would contain all compatible NVDA addons. And NVDA basic would be the small traditional NVDA, the one with no addons by default. The one we currently download. NVDA full would be great for new NVDA users because it would just have everything they need or would want in the future all addons preinstalled. They could hit a keystroke for helpful hints and just use the features they want as they become familiar with them. NVDA full would be great for assistive technology trainers and employers because everything they would ever want and need is right there all addons preinstalled. Want to relabel an object in your work application? The object enhancer addon is already there.