Text to speech in Storyline lessons

I'm looking for a bit of research on the effectiveness of text to speech vs voice narration. There are many reasons why to use one vs other (inflection, reduced effort on edits, etc) and I know we all have our own opinions but I'm looking for some scientific backing. Any studies done that you are aware of?

My experience with TTS: (not a scientific backing

Having tried various tools, including the aforementioned textaloud. My first conclusion would be that the best software (writer) to be used with voices is "Loquendo TTS Director", this software will give you complete control on the voices. Via speech tags, you can manipulate speed, pitch, duration, insert various pauses etc. You can make your own dictionary for words you would like to have pronounced in a customized way, it's also possible to have words spelled, or say number in time/date formats.

The voices available from Loquendo (version 7+) are the #1 I have seen/used. AT&T Natural Voice(s) would be  #2 and Acapela Telecom voices #3

My 2 cents:

The pros of using TTS vs Voice Narration:

• Though time consuming, Through the use of tags inside Loquendo TTS Director it's possible to read any text as natural as a human...and "accent less" (Received Pronunciation)
• Some text are instantaneously read very naturally without having to using the time consuming tags. Depending often on the voice used. e.g. Some text are read better by Simon than by Dave. (often related to the intonation and/or stress given to a specific word....but like I said in the point above...if you have time you can change all that by inserting tags)
• If you simply want to use TTS to include accessibility options...than Director or TextAloud will both be suffice and this would save you enormous amount of time compared to Voice Narration.
• Loquendo has an SDK and API for use with various devices...and this is what Maurizio should look into to realize his needs.

The cons:

• You can guess it already: To make sure that any text sounds 100% naturally, you will need to make use of tags....and this is 1. time consuming and 2. the learning curve is steep. The use of a macro program..(to remember multiple ctrl+c, or assign hotkeys for tags) could help you speeding up the process. However, since you don't want words to be pronounced similarly in ever text....you will have to constantly adjust tags....or use the Lexicon Manager inside Loquendo to create different dictionaries for different text :( + :)
• Actually the above is the only...problem.....but a huge one though! Once other issue that I have encountered is that Nuance has been very busy buying up companies that offered TTS....although nuance specializes in STT (Speech to text)...I believe that they are, or will be dominating the market when it comes to STT & TTS.....so, before buying anything, check on the main site whether Nuance has not recently acquired the company. 

I don't mind that a professional company like Nuance has been buying TTS scripts/programs/companies.....one problem though....They do not do anything with it as of yet. I looked through their offered software solutions, but no sign of TTS:(

Maurizio already mentioned about Loquendo and Nuance...I hope my contribution can help a bit more.

Cheers

Wim

@Maurizio

Most programs (expect Loquendo TTS which will only see LOquendo voices) can use voices from other companies. E.g Text Aloud will see voices off  Acapel Telecom, AT&T, Microsoft and Loquendo

So, why does it matter that Loquendo is not in business anymore? You can still use their voices and the program.

I have not seen a more complete TTS application than Loquendo Director + SDK + API....and I would say that If you can't do it what you try to do with Loquendo...than I think it will be very hard to accomplish with another company.

_____________________________________________________________________________

2 things to add to my previous post:

1. http://www.loquendo.com/en/demo-center/interactive-tts-demo/  (simple demo of Loquendo)

2. Looking at the embedded expressions in Loquendo, which sound absolutely natural.....I would suspect that in a few years....we would just have 1.000.000 common phrases, expressions and word combination used very often...and with this we could make very easily, quickly and naturally sounding interactions for use in the quizzes.

I have a software called Iclone...and Crazy Talk..which both support TTS and the voices of AT&T and Loquendo etc..are automatically detected...it would be nice if Articulate Storline would have this capability (of directly incorporating  TTS) as well.

I have copied the text above into an Loquendo TTS Director and converted it into an MP3 file. No tags used and no alteration...so thequality isn't always great....but with some (non-time consuming) clean up and minimal tagging....it could sound a lot better

Hello from Denmark

I´m using a product from Tuval Software in my Articulate programs

http://www.speechover.com/

Regards

Bjarne

This two blog posts may help:

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/when-it-makes-sense-to-pay-for-professional-narration/

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/13-more-tips-to-help-you-record-narration-like-the-pros/

Regards

Nigel 

Hello everyone! I see the discussion above and that it is two years since the contributions were made.

I would like to do the exact same thing as Maurizio Mattioli talk about. So I wonder if you know, if there are any newer suggestions on how to get the text that you type in Articulate 2 to be a woice (TTS).

Hi Monica!

You will find related threads in the community such as this one and another here.

Hopefully these will be able to guide you :)

Thank you very much!

//Monica

Of course Monica :)

The current best text to speech software is Text Speaker. It has customizable pronunciation, reads anything on your screen, and it even has talking reminders. It is great for learning languages as it highlights the words as they are being read. The bundled voices are well priced and sound very human. Voices are available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and more. Easily converts blogs, email, e-books, and more to MP3 or for listening instantly.