1. nvda@nvda.groups.io
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Japanese and Chinese TTS voices?

Clement Chou
 

Looking for some new ones to use. The vocalizer ones for both
languages are usable, but don't sound great as others have said about
this tts in general, and the Japanese one especially messes up Kanji
readings quite often. windows 1 core voices are ok, but don't seem to
know how to pause properly... what other voices are people using that
can be purchased and used with nvda?
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Gene
 

The web page where you can read about the voices and find samples is:
https://nextup.com/cerence/

Gene

-----Original Message-----
From: Leslie
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 9:57 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?









Sent from Mail for Windows 10





From: Gene
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 7:23 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?





There is nothing wonderful about those voices.

Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted inflection.

She sounds to me as though she is on downers. The other voice I sampled has

stilted inflection and artifacts as well. They may be better than the

Nuance voices that came before, but until these newer synthesizers sound as

good as the Google Assistant or Alexa, or other such very high quality

speech found in digital assistants, I'll consider them not worth using.



Gene

-----Original Message-----

From: Josh Kennedy

Where do you find them and how much are they? I loved the nuance voices that I heard before. I know you don’t like them, Jean, but I’d like to hear samples. I’m one of those people who like to change voices every once in a while. I have many voices on my phone. They add variety as I work.Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 8:39 AM

To: nvda@groups.io

Subject: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?







Hi,



Does anyone know if atguys or some other company will be selling the new

Cerence vocalizer deep AI voices for NVDA? Nextup sells them for their text

aloud product and they sound really good. Voices like conversational Zoey

sound quite good.







Josh











Sent from Mail for Windows 10
Re: FileZilla brings NVDA to a grinding halt

Gene
 

I wonder if you could slow the download speed down and if that would help. I haven't heard of really fast downloads causing the kind of problem you are describing in general, I can't test in FileZilla or elsewhere because I don't have a really fast connection. But if there is some way to slow the download speed, maybe that would solve the problem.

Gene

-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Farquharson
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 9:36 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] FileZilla brings NVDA to a grinding halt



Hello folks,

I have been trying to do some large folder transfers from FileZilla to my new machine. I noticed this on the old one, but chopped it up to the laughable specs on it. This new machine however is a complete monster, and while I'm trying to do a FileZilla transfer of 20000+ audio files, NVDA grinds to a complete stop. If I try and move around the FileZilla window, I often have to restart NVDA. Can anyone comment on this?

Thanks.
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Gene
 

There are many without hearing loss who have the same opinion. I'll be curious how people react to the voice samples.

Gene

-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Canazzi
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 9:35 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

You wrote:
"There is nothing wonderful about those voices.
Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted
inflection. She sounds to me as though she is on ..."
which only goes to show that beauty or in this case audio clarity is in
the eyes/ears of the beholder.

I have seen this kind of disagreement about how wonderful or terrible
voices/synthesizers sound for years and I have come to the conclusion
that every ear hears things differently. With my hearing issues, I
think that the Eloquence synthesizer with the male American English
voices of Glenn and Reed are superior to most out there. There are
those who have voiced vehement disagreement with this analysis: and so
it goes.



On 9/11/2020 10:23 AM, Gene wrote:
There is nothing wonderful about those voices.
Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted inflection. She sounds to me as though she is on downers. The other voice I sampled has stilted inflection and artifacts as well. They may be better than the Nuance voices that came before, but until these newer synthesizers sound as good as the Google Assistant or Alexa, or other such very high quality speech found in digital assistants, I'll consider them not worth using.

Gene
-----Original Message----- From: Josh Kennedy
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 8:39 AM
To: nvda@groups.io
Subject: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?



Hi,

Does anyone know if atguys or some other company will be selling the new Cerence vocalizer deep AI voices for NVDA? Nextup sells them for their text aloud product and they sound really good. Voices like conversational Zoey sound quite good.



Josh





Sent from Mail for Windows 10







--
They Ask Me If I'm Happy; I say Yes.
They ask: "How Happy are You?"
I Say: "I'm as happy as a stow away chimpanzee on a banana boat!"
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Gene
 

Yes, that is my opinion. I haven't followed older voices but I understand why those who like them and use them don't want to lose them.

As I think about it, one reason I expressed myself as I did is because the voices are claimed to be real improvements and I don't think they are significantly better.

Those who regularly use Nuance voices may differ because they are so much more familiar with the voices now widely used as opposed to these. I'll be curious how regular users react to the samples on the page.

Gene

-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Farquharson
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 9:31 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?



That might be your opinion, and that's perfectly fine. But I'm sure there are others who would welcome the additions. The thing is, most of the Nuance voices NVDA uses haven't been refreshed in quite some time. In fact, since NVDA 2019.3, we have not gained voices, we have lost the ability to use many of them, because they have not been ported to Python 3. Ie DecTalk, SoftVoice, RH Voice and so on and so on.

As crazy as it sounds, there are some, such as myself, who still want to use them. They may be old, but they do have a certain... charm.

The loss of those voices is really what kept me from updating for quite some time. And I'm still a bit sore about it. I wish a greater effort had been taken to bring some of the classics along.
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Amir
 

OK. Let's see what happens in this regard in the near future. I also like IBM TTS (Watson) and the default Google Neural voice.

Best,
Amir
Re: FileZilla brings NVDA to a grinding halt

Brian Vogel
 

Have you considered SyncToy?  See: 

Download SyncToy 2.1 from Official Microsoft Download Center


The nice thing is that it should be accessible and it lets you set things up for synchronization that's bidirectional or unidirectional.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

          ~ Oscar Wilde

 
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Jesse Farquharson
 

I understand the delays aspect of things, for sure. Which is why I wouldn't use it for navigation. If NVAccess were to post a disclaimer somewhere, I'm sure that might help things. Or, different voices could be specified for different use cases, sort of akin to how... dare I say it, JAWS does it.

In terms of the cost, for sure, that could be a definite barrier. However, I'm sure something could be worked out in that regard.
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Amir
 

But it might be a serious concern -- guess it is indeed. People are complaining about 70-millisecond delays with SAPI 5 voices on NVDA's Github issues page, and these deep-learning voices can generate substantially longer pauses given their online operation. If you throw some paragraphs at them to read longer passages, the delay might be passable, but for navigation, the essence of screen reader use, that will become a headache. What's more, they are not free. You can use them up to a certain point for free, but all of them charge users per a specified number of characters synthesized after that. And the screen reader usage model requires lots of synthesis -- even for typing stuff.

Best,
Amir
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Jesse Farquharson
 

I personally don't think I'd mind the delay, honestly. If it meant access to new voices I've not heard before which could make reading documents and such more pleasant, I think I'd gladly take it.
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Amir
 

Nicely put. Granted, Apple relies on them, Nuance in this case, for VoiceOver, but its own Siri Female voice is head and shoulders above what Vocalizer provides. Of course, I mean the Siri voice which VoiceOver can't use as there's a difference between the Female Siri voice for VoiceOver and the Female Siri voice which utilizes deep learning algorithms. Moreover, the best performers are also gobbled up by larger companies (like what happened to Ivona with Amazon). The rather worrying point, at least for screen reader users is that though Google/Microsoft/IBM have achieved a lot in terms of bringing oomph and naturalness to their TTS engines via deep learning, they can't be used offline due to various limitations and can't be used online due to the delay they generate for screen readers.

Best,
Amir
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Afik Souffir
 

 

Hi,

 

How can you download this voice?

 

 

From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Devin Prater
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 6:29 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

 

I kinda think these specialty TTS companies are losing steam. I don't think they can keep up with Apple, Google, or even Amazon in this.

Devin Prater

sent from Gmail.

 

 

On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 9:57 AM Leslie <soundsofmusic@...> wrote:

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

From: Gene
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 7:23 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

 

There is nothing wonderful about those voices.

Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted inflection.

She sounds to me as though she is on downers.  The other voice I sampled has

stilted inflection and artifacts as well.  They may be better than the

Nuance voices that came before, but until these newer synthesizers sound as

good as the Google Assistant or Alexa, or other such very high quality

speech found in digital assistants, I'll consider them not worth using.

 

Gene

-----Original Message-----

From: Josh Kennedy

Where do you find them and how much are they?  I loved the nuance voices that I heard before.  I know you don’t like them, Jean, but I’d like to hear samples.  I’m one of those people who like to change voices every once in a while.  I have many voices on my phone.  They add variety as I work.Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 8:39 AM

To: nvda@groups.io

Subject: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

 

 

 

Hi,

 

Does anyone know if atguys or some other company will be selling the new

Cerence vocalizer deep AI voices for NVDA? Nextup sells them for their text

aloud product and they sound really good. Voices like conversational Zoey

sound quite good.

 

 

 

Josh

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Devin Prater
 

I kinda think these specialty TTS companies are losing steam. I don't think they can keep up with Apple, Google, or even Amazon in this.
Devin Prater
sent from Gmail.


On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 9:57 AM Leslie <soundsofmusic@...> wrote:

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

From: Gene
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 7:23 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

 

There is nothing wonderful about those voices.

Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted inflection.

She sounds to me as though she is on downers.  The other voice I sampled has

stilted inflection and artifacts as well.  They may be better than the

Nuance voices that came before, but until these newer synthesizers sound as

good as the Google Assistant or Alexa, or other such very high quality

speech found in digital assistants, I'll consider them not worth using.

 

Gene

-----Original Message-----

From: Josh Kennedy

Where do you find them and how much are they?  I loved the nuance voices that I heard before.  I know you don’t like them, Jean, but I’d like to hear samples.  I’m one of those people who like to change voices every once in a while.  I have many voices on my phone.  They add variety as I work.Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 8:39 AM

To: nvda@groups.io

Subject: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

 

 

 

Hi,

 

Does anyone know if atguys or some other company will be selling the new

Cerence vocalizer deep AI voices for NVDA? Nextup sells them for their text

aloud product and they sound really good. Voices like conversational Zoey

sound quite good.

 

 

 

Josh

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Re: FileZilla brings NVDA to a grinding halt

Damien Garwood
 

Hi,
If there's an error, WinSCP brings up a dialog straightaway asking whether you want to retry, skip or abort.
Cheers,
Damien.

On 11/09/2020 03:50 pm, Jesse Farquharson wrote:
Hi Damien,
Does WinSCP allow you to view failed transfers and such?
Thanks.
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Leslie
 

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

From: Gene
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 7:23 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

 

There is nothing wonderful about those voices.

Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted inflection.

She sounds to me as though she is on downers.  The other voice I sampled has

stilted inflection and artifacts as well.  They may be better than the

Nuance voices that came before, but until these newer synthesizers sound as

good as the Google Assistant or Alexa, or other such very high quality

speech found in digital assistants, I'll consider them not worth using.

 

Gene

-----Original Message-----

From: Josh Kennedy

Where do you find them and how much are they?  I loved the nuance voices that I heard before.  I know you don’t like them, Jean, but I’d like to hear samples.  I’m one of those people who like to change voices every once in a while.  I have many voices on my phone.  They add variety as I work.Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 8:39 AM

To: nvda@groups.io

Subject: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

 

 

 

Hi,

 

Does anyone know if atguys or some other company will be selling the new

Cerence vocalizer deep AI voices for NVDA? Nextup sells them for their text

aloud product and they sound really good. Voices like conversational Zoey

sound quite good.

 

 

 

Josh

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Re: FileZilla brings NVDA to a grinding halt

Jesse Farquharson
 

Hi Damien,

Does WinSCP allow you to view failed transfers and such?

Thanks.
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Amir
 

Agreed 100 percent -- as subjective as it might be. At least compared with what we hear from cloud-based Google/Siri/IBM AI voices, the newly packaged Nuance Vocalizer voices sound vapid and the US English ones have intonation issues.

Best,
Amir
Re: FileZilla brings NVDA to a grinding halt

Damien Garwood
 

Hi,
I have the same problem. That's why I use WinSCP, not only for its better responsiveness alongside NVDA, but also the fact that it's less cluttered (with the right settings).
Cheers,
Damien.

On 11/09/2020 03:36 pm, Jesse Farquharson wrote:
Hello folks,
I have been trying to do some large folder transfers from FileZilla to my new machine. I noticed this on the old one, but chopped it up to the laughable specs on it. This new machine however is a complete monster, and while I'm trying to do a FileZilla transfer of 20000+ audio files, NVDA grinds to a complete stop. If I try and move around the FileZilla window, I often have to restart NVDA. Can anyone comment on this?
Thanks.
FileZilla brings NVDA to a grinding halt

Jesse Farquharson
 

Hello folks,

I have been trying to do some large folder transfers from FileZilla to my new machine. I noticed this on the old one, but chopped it up to the laughable specs on it. This new machine however is a complete monster, and while I'm trying to do a FileZilla transfer of 20000+ audio files, NVDA grinds to a complete stop. If I try and move around the FileZilla window, I often have to restart NVDA. Can anyone comment on this?

Thanks.
Re: nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?

Ron Canazzi
 

You wrote:
"There is nothing wonderful about those voices.
Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted inflection. She sounds to me as though she is on ..."
which only goes to show that beauty or in this case audio clarity is in the eyes/ears of the beholder.

I have seen this kind of disagreement about how wonderful or terrible voices/synthesizers sound for years and I have come to the conclusion that every ear hears things differently.  With my hearing issues, I think that the Eloquence synthesizer with the male American English voices of Glenn and Reed are superior to most out there.  There are those who have voiced vehement disagreement with this analysis: and so it goes.

On 9/11/2020 10:23 AM, Gene wrote:
There is nothing wonderful about those voices.
Zoey sounds as though she's gargling a little and has stilted inflection. She sounds to me as though she is on downers.  The other voice I sampled has stilted inflection and artifacts as well.  They may be better than the Nuance voices that came before, but until these newer synthesizers sound as good as the Google Assistant or Alexa, or other such very high quality speech found in digital assistants, I'll consider them not worth using.

Gene
-----Original Message----- From: Josh Kennedy
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2020 8:39 AM
To: nvda@groups.io
Subject: [nvda] nuance cerence neural tts for NVDA?



Hi,

Does anyone know if atguys or some other company will be selling the new Cerence vocalizer deep AI voices for NVDA? Nextup sells them for their text aloud product and they sound really good. Voices like conversational Zoey sound quite good.



Josh





Sent from Mail for Windows 10






--
They Ask Me If I'm Happy; I say Yes.
They ask: "How Happy are You?"
I Say: "I'm as happy as a stow away chimpanzee on a banana boat!"