-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io [mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io] On Behalf Of Shaun Everiss
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2018 2:14 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] I take it there have been no improvements to the flawed espeak ng in 2017.4?

I know people that can run speech as fast as it would go, 300-600 wpm.

But I was never able to do that, when in university, I ran at 200-300wpm at a stretch.

Once out of university I dropped back to 120, simply put yes I could get the gist but I could never understand things at that speed.

As an admin and support person I need to understand what the heck my speech is saying.

Testing websites and stuff will give me inaccessible things, broken things and really bad things, running fast will not get me anywhere.




On 27/03/2018 7:29 p.m., Sharni-Lee Ward wrote:

Well, it's a good thing the only career I intend on having is that of a fantasy writer, then, isn't it? :D

On 27/03/2018 5:05 PM, Rosemarie Chavarria wrote:
If you had a job that involved listening like a customer service rep, you'd have no choice but to get used to listening to your screen reader at a faster speed.



From: nvda@nvda.groups.io<mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io> [mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io] On Behalf Of Sharni-Lee Ward
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2018 1:19 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io<mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [nvda] I take it there have been no improvements to the flawed espeak ng in 2017.4?


I'll admit I've not heard Eloquence outside of Jaws and the addon I was sent some years back. I didn't know the version in Jaws was different to Eloquence on its own. The one in the addon I have doesn't pause very long between sentences. Also, I just do not like to speed up my synth too much. I still think of how some of you can listen to something at the highest rate possible and understand it. I've tried increasing it a little, but it's just not enjoyable for me.



That said, I'm now very used to Espeak, and it may not be an improvement over Eloquence in the opinion of some, but it was definitely an improvement over Microsoft Anna, which was what I had been stuck with via Narrator until I discovered NVDA. Espeak is the voice of NVDA to me now, and other synths fall short in many ways.

On 26/03/2018 7:20 PM, Gene wrote:
You wrote:
I don't like Eloquence because it isn't as crisp as Espeak. I have compared
it to A.M radio in the past, and Espeak to FM/CD Quality sound.

That is a very inaccurate comparison. E-Speak has more high end in the s sounds and the voice may have a little more high end but hardly comparable to FM radio or CD quality sound. and why is the difference of perhaps two thousand or three thousand KHZ, by my estimate, from, let's say, around 7000KHZ in Eloquence to about nine hundred or one thousand KHZ in E-Speak of any real importance? I would imagine you talk on the phone without worrying about such things.

Eloquence has much better understandability of speech at higher speeds, and pronounces a lot more words correctly.

Also, I don't know if you are talking about Eloquence as modified by the producers of JAWS or Eloquence, as it is unmodified. The JAWS designers customized it. If you are saying it isn't crisp because you are thinking of JAWS Eloquence, that's not an accurate representation of what unmodified Eloquence sounds like. Also, the JAWS modifiers took out pauses at periods. That seriously degrades reading, that the modified version doesn't pause at periods.

You may be pleasantly surprised if you try the demo of the HTML version. If you haven't heard unmodified Eloquence, you don't know what it really sounds like.

Gene