You know the crazy thing about that old Votrax is that, working 
in a college environment, the students tried a lot of inventive 
things with that old thing, including trying to make it cuss.  
Turns out that the manufacturer of the Votrax was a firm called 
Federal Screw Works.  In order to get the thing to sware you 
would have to misspell the word you wanted it to say.  Enough 
said about that.  I'll leave the rest to your fertile 
imagination.  73, Jim WA6EKS

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Kiehne <[log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Date sent: Sun, 19 May 2013 07:26:36 -0700
Subject: Re: Need opinion

I still have a votrax pss.  I don't know if it still works!

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Gammon
Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2013 6:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Need opinion

Man, I think it's amazing how ye'all get your nickers in a knott 
when it
comes to synthesized speech.  I come from the days of the old 
external
speech box made by votrax and I appreciated that.  However, 
having said
that, I do appreciate the new higher quality voices but am not 
partial to
one over another.    73, Jim WA6EKS

---Original Message-----
From: Butch Bussen
Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2013 5:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Need opinion

I like the voice on the book sense much better.  If you're not 
needing
small size, I also have a bookport dt (desktop) which has a great 
text
to speech.
73
Butch
WA0VJR
Node 3148
Wallace, ks.


On Sat, 18 May 2013, Howard Kaufman wrote:

 I hate the stream voice so much, that I take my bookshare books, 
open them
 in k1000, and save them with the voice I like, as mp3 files.  
Then I play
 them on the player.  I absolutely love my milestone 312, but I 
don't think
 the synthesizer is much better than the stream is.  I think most 
of the
 book
 reader devices, try to sound like voice-over, which is awful if 
you read
 at
 any speed, because it mumbles.

 Synthesized voice choices are as personal as anything, one is 
beloved by
 one
 person and hated by another.  Personally, the old doubletalk 
speech is the
 best.  That's for me, and people here will insist I am as crazy 
as a loon.
 Get voice samples of the TTS engines, or do what I do, and 
convert text to
 mp3 and play that.