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From: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (William Wilson)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: artic vs vocalize
Message-ID: <18691@bunker.isc-br.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 22:23:24 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

 MO> I wonder why you prefer vocalize and the sounding board over
 MO> artic? Aren't the synthesizers based on the same chip?

Mary,
      Although I am relatively a new Soundingboard and Vocal-Eyes user,
and there are many people more qualified to answer your questions than
me, perhaps even some guy named Geoffray, I have to give you at least a
few of my perceptions.
      Yes, even though the Symphonix board and Soundingboard are based
upon the same chip, they do have some distinct differences.  One of
these is the onboard ram the Soundingboard has that allows the text to
speech to be written there rather than to valuable dos ram, at least in
most cases.  There are available several options with the Soundingboard
that, at least to the best of my knowledge, arn't present in the Artic
board.  These include such things as hot keys, easily configurable to
your choice of key, for things like Hyperscan, time/date announcement,
silence key, rate, volume and tone changes, and a useful pause function
that actually works!  Of course many of these things are available in a
speech program, but the advantages of having them available at the board
level are numerous.  Again, despite the fact they are based upon the
same chip, and this is admittedly something that is sort of in the ears
of the beholder, I find the Soundingboard speech more understandible
than that of the Artic board.  Not immensely of course, but since you
have the ability to easily change things like word and sentence delay
with the Soundingboard, a measurable difference in my mind.  Also, there
is the really obvious, the fact the Soundingboard is locked to no
particular speech program, is supported by most speech programs, and
actually less expensive than the newest from Artic!

 MO> that vocalize is, or at least used to be, kind of a bear bolnes
 MO> program, unless you were already a genius, writing macros etc.

Wow, if this was ever the case, it most definately was way before I ever
looked at Vocal-Eyes!  If there is anything that Vocal-Eyes is not, it
is bare bones!
     Seriously, if I ever started posting about the features available
in Vocal-Eyes, and I'm just talking about the ones I'm familiar with,
this message could go on forever!  Honestly, the best thing for you to
do is get a copy of the demo and take a look at it yourself on whatever
system you can!  (Is your Artic board locked to Vest?)  All I can tell
you is to set aside a lot of time to do this, cause there is an awful
lot to look at!  I really don't feel comfortable pushing one speech
program that much over another here, but referring to Vocal-Eyes as bare
bones is so much an unrealistic image that I had to say something!

      Give it a look Mary, cause I know you'll be glad you did!
                                                        Willie

... BlinkTalk, Dr. Deb and Silver in Pittsburgh!

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