Re: [css3-speech][ISSUE-271] “neutral” voice

On 24/07/2012 11:45 AM, fantasai wrote:
> On 07/23/2012 05:51 PM, Jon Rimmer wrote:
>
>> If it were the former, the speech engine would default to a male
>> voice, but if it were the latter, it would use a distorted or
>> robotic voice.
>
> Or maybe just raise the pitch to a more neutral range. I doubt
> 'neutral' is intended to mean "inhuman". :)

That's what I thought, but when I looked at the Java speech API, I found 
that it documents the GENDER_NEUTRAL constant as "Neutral voice that is 
neither male or female (for example, artificial voices, robotic 
voices)." [1]. Microsoft's .NET API doesn't provide any detail [2]. 
It'll depend on the implementation of the speech synthesis I suppose, 
but it seems possible some may use novelty voices if that's what's 
installed and available.

It's worth nothing that both APIs define a separate "no preference" 
option as well, so an auto value would seem to be required.

[1] 
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17802_01/products/products/java-media/speech/forDevelopers/jsapi-doc/javax/speech/synthesis/Voice.html#GENDER_NEUTRAL
[2] 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.speech.synthesis.voicegender.aspx<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms586874.aspx> 

Received on Tuesday, 24 July 2012 02:45:07 UTC