Quote:
Originally Posted by vivaldirules
I found two disturbing aspects with the software I bought a few years back. One was inflection. The software I bought did not change inflection much. So questions sounded similar to statements. Another was that it wouldn't stop or even pause at the end of a sentence. Those sound like pretty glaring faults and they were. But I discovered them only after I had paid for it. Bottom line: test the program as much as you can before you pay for it.
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Inflection is up to the voice, not the software. The pauses at end of line, commas, etc. can be changed in the software, if the software supports it (TextAloud does).
Even the best sounding voices are not going to be confused for a real person. Given that, several of the newer voices sound very nice and are very usable.
Just as an example for TextAloud: in the Pronounciation Editor, I entered a regular expression to change the amount of pause at a comma (followed by a space).
Word: {{re=(,\s)}}
Pronounciation: {{Pause=0.1}}
Using the Pronounciation Editor affects all installed voices. If you want to only change the pronounciation of certain words in a specific voice, AT&T and NeoSpeech each have dictionary editors that only affect their own voices. I assume that other vendors have something similar.