text to speech voices

text to speech voices

The Importance of Text to Speech Voices

1. Introduction

Text to Speech synthesis has come a long way since speech was first implemented on the DECtalk system. Early TTS systems were very mechanical and hard to listen to. TTS developers have strived to improve the quality of TTS speech over the years, providing smoother, more human-like speech patterns and tone. TTS voice quality and performance have become key differentiators among TTS software and a large measure of TTS usability and user acceptance.

Text to Speech (TTS) has been an immensely useful software feature that allows users to import text and utilize it for computer-generated audio speech. This has greatly improved the application usability for blind users and users of assistive technology. TTS has also proved helpful in educational software where users can highlight text and have it read aloud, as well as in language translation applications. TTS has been implemented using many different voice engines, both from commercial vendors and as free or open-source packages.

2. Advantages of Text to Speech Voices

One of the primary benefits is that Text to Speech software can save you time. They say that time is money, and in the fast-paced world of today, there is an ever-increasing pressure to get things done. With TTS software, you can listen to that eBook or audio file you’ve been meaning to get to, all the while getting other things done around the house, or even just relaxing your eyes. Students and writers can use TTS to proofread and audio read their writing. This allows not only for quick error checking but also helps maintain focus on the task, potentially increasing motivation and quality. Busy professionals can listen to documents while commuting, or those learning a second language can make good use of those ‘down times’ throughout the day by enhancing their listening and pronunciation skills.

In the modern world, there is a great need for effective communication. Most of us rely on communication tools during our daily activities. These tools can be particularly helpful for individuals with learning disabilities, for whom speech can be a real challenge. But Text to Speech software is not only useful to these users; virtually anyone can take advantage of this innovative technology to save time and streamline daily activities.

3. Applications of Text to Speech Voices

The potential applications of text-to-speech technology are numerous. They include the obvious benefits to blind students and professionals, but also extend into other areas. For example, the web offers an enormous opportunity to provide access to information, increasing productivity for students and workers who are required to read up on a specific topic. However, the web is also full of multimedia content. This can be frustrating to someone who is expecting to find information only to encounter an audio or video clip. For a blind person, such an encounter can mean the end of the information quest if the multimedia content is not accessible. Mute the Speech, an Internet Explorer plug-in application developed at the University of Washington, is a text-to-speech system used to replace audio on video or multimedia files with existing text. If multimedia developers can be encouraged to provide the scripts they use to make multimedia clips, such technology would provide blind internet users with access to an otherwise neglected source of information on the web. Looking for a different set of applications, dyslexic students may have difficulty reading aloud or expressing themselves in writing. They can use text-to-speech software in the drafting and editing phases of writing as a multi-sensory way to identify and correct errors in written material. At last year’s International Dyslexia Association conference in Seattle, Learning Disabilities teacher consultant Laurel Schaffer called text-to-speech software a breakthrough technology for dyslexics.

4. Challenges and Limitations

The challenges and limitations present in TTS technology are the reflections of the problems in the production process. Since text data is the only information needed for synthesis, the data used for building TTS systems for a specific language can be reused to build a system for another language. However, it is still necessary to go through the same time-consuming process of system building even though the data used has the same linguistic content. The single most often voiced complaints by users about TTS systems are that they sound “too robotic.” While considerable progress has been made in improving naturalness (as well as in developing methods for measuring it), the goal of TTS systems that are indistinguishable from human speech is still a distant one. This contrasts with the other major technology for computer access to print, namely, screen readers, for which TTS for the visually impaired is the most common application. TTS systems for such readers don’t have the same scalability challenges, and the best synthesis systems are quite natural-sounding. On the other hand, synthesis technologies used in screen readers are generally based on various forms of concatenative synthesis that are not easily portable to other languages. Thus, in the context of the larger language technology landscape, the future of TTS for screen readers is uncertain, and it may not follow the same path as general TTS in terms of language coverage. Economic and competitive factors have also had an impact on the R&D done in various TTS technologies; this has sometimes resulted in abandonment of projects before language coverage goals have been met. A related case of technology abandonment occurs with the proprietary TTS systems developed by commercial MT providers. Users of MT services would like to see TTS as an option in the MT interface, but no MT provider is interested in duplicating the large effort that has gone into developing general TTS just to provide spoken output of their own translations.

5. Conclusion

In short, TTS is a crucial aspect of modern digital technology and has a wide range of uses. Its importance goes largely unnoticed and is unappreciated by the general public who are ignorant of TTS and take it for granted. Unfortunately, TTS doesn’t come anywhere close to replicating the sound of a human voice and is often ridiculed in situations such as prank calls and in online videos. However, the importance of TTS cannot be denied and it will continue to be developed and improved in the future. The most recent advances in TTS technology are being made by using neural networks and deep learning systems to produce a better model of sounds and their locations in language, and it is expected that this will bring significant improvements to the quality of TTS in the near future. TTS systems are becoming essential for the speech-impaired who wish to use a computer as a means of verbal communication and there are many situations such as in-car satellite navigation where the voice is an essential and safer alternative to a visual display. Ultimately, the importance of TTS lies in its ability to convert language to sound and direct its uses towards the growing capabilities of sound technology where it will play a large role in the future.