Microsoft Anna - The new TTS voice in Vista

re: Microsoft Anna - The new TTS voice in Vista

Rosyna — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:02:38 GMT

Curious, why is the word "Microsoft" prepended to all the voice names? Does Microsoft really need to brand everything? It reminds me of "Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Microsoft License Pack Additional License" (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Vista/dp/B000HCZ9B6/)

re: Microsoft Anna - The new TTS voice in Vista

robch — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:44:14 GMT

It's fairly common for TTS Voices in Windows to have the company name prepended to the "voice talent" name. The main reason to do so is to help the user distinguish which voices are from what company when the user goes into the Speech Control Panel to choose a different voice. That way, if two different company's end up choosing the same "voice talent" name (like Anna), users will be able to tell which voice came from which company.

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re: Microsoft Anna - The new TTS voice in Vista

someone — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:09:43 GMT

lol that SAM=Foreground window

re: Microsoft Anna - The new TTS voice in Vista

someone — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:16:32 GMT

Check this out:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20060812/what-did-you-say/

Overall pronunciations and naturallness rocks!!
But Anna seems to:
1. Has a tendency to say the next word even before the first one finishes. Some words are pronounced as if they're at the beginning of a sentence.
2. Can't say 'Vista' properly.

re: Microsoft Anna - The new TTS voice in Vista

eddwo — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 01:01:45 GMT

This seems like a great comparison of various different TTS systems.
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/reviews_of_speech_synths.html

I have to say that Microsoft SAM sounds no better than the system available on the Amiga two decades earlier.
Anna seems slightly better, the one demoed in the WWDC Keynote better still.

The Neospeech sample from that page sounds absolutely amazing. The phrasing is slightly off, but it could be because the text is ambiguous, but the sound is completely natural.

I understand that you can't go shipping 600mb of sample for each language with the OS, but the difference between the built in one and the state of the art is night and day.

The "Mojave Experiment"

All the Cool Developers use Speech APIs — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:12:30 GMT

Check out the "Mojave Experiment" , where Microsoft brought in people to show them a un-released