Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!mit-amt!geek
From: geek@mit-amt (Chris Schmandt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Voice recognition/speech synthesis products
Keywords: voice speech
Message-ID: <3442@mit-amt>
Date: 29 Dec 88 21:20:29 GMT
References: <300@holin.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: geek@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Chris Schmandt)
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 34

In article <300@holin.ATT.COM> doc@holin.ATT.COM (David Mundhenk) writes:
>
>I have been very interested in speech synthesis and voice recognition
>for quite a while (had a nice speech synthesizer for my Commodore 64,
>rest it's soul). November PC Tech Journal has an ad in the back from
>"COVOX,Inc." (TM?) listing "Speech Products" including "Synthesizer-
>$79.95", "Digitizer-$89.95" and "Voice Recognition-$49.95".
>
>Anyone familiar with these products? I got money for these for Christmas
>but don't want anyone to waste money on junk.  :v(
>The prices sound almost too good to be true....
>
>I commonly use two computers/terminals at once, and it would be *nice*
>to talk to one while I type on another. 8-]

I would not use the term *junk* but for these prices you're not going
to get something that really does what you think it will unless you've
got some experience dealing with speech technologies.  These will be
toys; hopefully fun toys, but nothing that will really change the way
you think about your computers.  The synthesized speech will be
hard to understand; you may in time become quite proficient at
understanding it, but others will have a hard time.  Speech 
recognition with devices costing 1 to 2 orders of magnitude more
is still not good enough that you'd really want to replace the
keyboard.  (voice might be useful for switching one keyboard
between 2 screens, though).

Covox has been around for a while and their stuff works.  It's not
great.  Mind you, the $5,000 equivalents arent' that great either.

In short: speech is a tough world to work in.  Get the stuff and 
start to learn about it, but don't expect miracles!

chris