Yeah, sometimes the splicing with natural-like voices can be quite irritating. I'd still rather that than computerized voices though lol. I think Ivona did pretty good at making almost human-like voices. I havn't found any other TTS that compares to Ivona. Like, if you ever have the chance to listen to the Ivona voice called Kendra, of course, its not completely human, but it has some of the most natural flow and accurate inflection I've ever heard in a TTS. I have Ivona's Kendra on Windows with NVDA and I just increase the speed a little bit (still at normal human speaking speed just a bit faster than the default rate) and to me, that sounds even more natural than the default speed used on Bookshare for example. Last I checked, Bookshare used Ivona Kendra to voice its books when you choose audio. But when I listen to something like the Nuance voices, the inflection just doesn't compare to the flow of Ivona. Thats why its so frustrating that we can't seem to get Ivona on Linux. Still, I would take Nuance or just about any other natural TTS synth, even if it has some aukward inflections, I'd still take that any day, over Espeak or Eloquence, but thats just me lol. I can tollerate short tasks with computerized speech, but if its a longer piece of text, anything that I am supposed to focus on or enjoy, then I want a natural TTS for that. But I'm glad the computerized voices are available. Its really just a personal preference. Some like the computerized ones, and some like the natural-ish ones. I've always chose the natural ones whenever I have the choice. Even though they're not quite human, to me I just find them easier to listen to. SL _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list