You see, this is why I named my site "Waffle".

And he actually breathes. This may not seem like a big deal (it's fairly easy to implement), but it caught my attention right away. He just feels more human, in a subtle way.

This sounds interesting when spoken: "the low amount of distortion"

Thanks for bringing it up. I just spent 20 minutes playing with my 3 year old daughter. She is a spanish speaker, but she knows a few things in english (colors and what not). She had a blast hearing the computer talking. I actually had a mini conversation with her via the laptop.

From my experience, Alex's lovely for Voiceover until you jack up the speaking rate to something fast...and by fast I mean a bit faster than average speech, cause it's quite annoying to have to read a whole webpage or something slowly. On the flip side, if I'm reading a book for leisure and feel like using the voice to read it to me at a slower rate, it almost feels like a real person is talking.

So, it's fantastic for what it is (free voice that comes with the OS, natural sounding and all)...but it's not that fantastic compared to some of the voices available out there.

Alex rocks. After I'm done writing my column, I highlight all the text and let OS X speak the text. It sound real enough where I can easily notice any bad wording or missed spelling errors.

Alex is pretty good, and pronounces my last name better than some humans, but really messes up saying 'Crumpet'.

And he actually breathes.
I was about to note the same thing. I tried:
say "Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, and ate them quickly. It was a big meal, with pickled peppers."
I had to play it several times to make sure I wasn't hearing thing, and actually heard him take in a breath between sentences.

English test:

say "Am I Australian: can't; or British: either."

But while the voices have improved at some point (prior even than tiger) they dumbed down the parser: With the old Apple speech parser this sentence would be spoken correctly: "Did you read the book I read?" pronouncing the first rEEd and the second red; Now there parser has no sense of tense. There are other examples of encroaching retardation as well but I just got informed that the coffee shop I'm in is closing so, well, I guess I better just end here.

@Kevin:
I'm intrigued that it could correctly parse that sentence before, because there are almost identical sentences that I'm not sure I could correctly read without more context. For instance, "Did you read the same magazine I read?" This sentence makes perfect sense with the second "read" as either present (meaning I habitually read the magazine) or past tense (I once perused this magazine). I wonder how smart the old parser was.

But while the voices have improved at some point (prior even than tiger) they dumbed down the parser: With the old Apple speech parser this sentence would be spoken correctly: "Did you read the book I read?" pronouncing the first rEEd and the second red; Now there parser has no sense of tense. There are other examples of encroaching retardation as well but I just got informed that the coffee shop I'm in is closing so, well, I guess I better just end here.

@Chuck,

Point taken (since I can't prove this exact sentence); it is an example of me trying to be quick and thus changing a key variable. This is the test phrase I used to use: "I just read a new book; did you read it?" My point was that the parser used to recognize tense with "read" and it no longer does. In fact, Read is, now, always read as rEEd. I don't know when the change occurred but I can say that even in OS 8, the parser would correctly guess tense on the word Read.

Note also: "Did you read the book I read" is faulty grammar if read is pronounced rEEd (because of ambiguous tense, and/or the nominative noun): it could be "did you read the book I am reading" (referencing a specific book in the present tense) or "do you read the book I read" were the book is a nominative noun. The only proper translation of "did you read the book I read" is in the past tense and thus pronounced red.

PS -- sorry about the double comment; I refreshed the page.

Kevin, your grammatical analysis is faulty itself. A /reed/ reading that would make grammatical sense: "Did you read the book that I (always) read (on Sunday afternoons)?"

Further, one could argue that your "corrected" example is likewise ungrammatical: "Did you read the book I am reading?". Shouldn't that be "Did you read the book that I am reading?" ?

I'm no prescriptivist, but I think that those who are need to tread carefully.

Hmm... I think the main point of any speech synthesis is to make a computer sound like a human -- of contemporary means. Proper grammar aside, the idea is that there are different forms of pronouncing the same word (hey, who made this language?)... and any smart computer should be trained to separate colloquial distinction. All sides agree that this is a mess but isn't that what makes it a challenge...!!!

Alex is a great improvement, but it can't be said to be the end of the road, especially the way Apple pumped it up in the unveiling. Besides it can't even pronounce my name correctly.

--Naseer (try "Nuhcier")