SOFTWARE DREAMS AND TALKING MACHINES
ELAN AND ACCUVOICE
CD-ROMS AND SYNTHESIZED SPEECH
Report By SuperAdaptoid

The quest for "natural" sounding synthesized speech for the PC continues to progress and advance the process. Frustrated by the "human factor" of personal preference(s) and the physical factor of the "memory gap". While personal preference may never resolve personal "expectation(s)"; with larger hard drives and faster multi- speed CD Rom technology there is now enough room for PC's to hold the sound files and phonetic dictionaries necessary to make machine synthesized speech sound seem more "natural" and less mechanical. Starting with the simple storage of WAV files for individual word pronounciation. "talking" CD Rom(s) reference dictionaries have progressed to "talking" reference texts. Now system- wide text- to- speech synthesis programs can be CD Rom based for the PC's. With ever faster processing chips and compression technology, "natural" speech no longer needs a mainframe. Most speech product demonstration disks are either "limited" floppy- disk demos, or on- line [on- site] "simulations". Software developers sight the problems of security and the cost of limited [short- run] production of CD Rom Demo- Disks. A demonstration of a fully operative, quad- speed [or faster], CD Rom based "natural" speech synthisizer program is yet to be found. However there are a few simulations worth exploration. ELAN offers a CD Rom demonstration disk for their speech synthesizers. ELAN has several speech engine [synthesizers] in a variety of spoken languages. Because their FTP download site is located in France, access can be difficult. To overcome Trans- Atlantic download problems Elan has put their FTP site demos on CD Rom. While these are demonstrations of conventional hard disk resident speech programs; the CD Rom demo disk gives some of the operational "feel" associated with CD Rom based speech. You can ask for their CD Rom demonstration disk by email to: Elan Informatique. Contact: Elan Informatique 4 rue Jean Rodier, 31400 TOULOUSE FRANCE Contact person: Mr, Etienne Lamort de Gail Direct Ee- mail address : ftp://ftp.elan.fr Phone: +33-61-36-0777 Fax: +33-61-36-0770 BBS: +33-61-36-0788 General E-mail: 101346.465@compuserve.com Elan Web Site: http://www.elan.fr FTP Site: ftp://ftp.elan.fr ACCUVOICE is a CD Rom based speech synthesizer which loads to your hard deive and operates throughout your system. Once speech is loaded, your CD Rom drive is available to load and run other CD Rom applications. ACCUVOICE's current space requirement is 160 mb; a newer edition is projected to be only 50 mb. Although developed on a quad-speed CD Rom drive, ACCUVOICE says any CD Rom drive will do. Currently ACCUVOICE is available for MS Windows 95+ and NT. Not a demonstration WAV files for speech, and a Text- To- Speech output engine provide a demonstration "simulated" on the ACCUVOICE Web Site. While the speech sounds good, the demonstration is very limited. Like most "On- Site Simulations" you can not evaluate or assess the program's response or compatibility with in your system. Demonstration disks are not available. You can try the ACCUVOICE simulation at the following: http://www.acuvoice.com/

E-mail to: AcuVoice1@AOL.COM

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