In the late 1990s I had text-to-speech on my run-of-the-mill 100mhz Pentium running Windows 98, with 8MB RAM. I could select the voice too.
It was also good enough to read my high school reading assignment, which I recorded to cassette and then listened to on a long drive.
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So, what's novel about this site? As a learning project, it's pretty cool! (And I hope you built some good skills and enjoyed yourself making it.) Otherwise, there isn't much difference from what we had 30 years ago on much simpler hardware.
"Nature Show Host": not David Attenborough, surprisingly
"Compelling Lady": nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday
"Upset Girl": this is more the voiceover that would be used on depressing animal charity adverts
"Magnetic Man": you can't fool me, that's an American
"Patient Man": patience gives you reverb. The word "British" is spoken with a very non-British accent.
Not to be all Henry Higgins, but these are all "placeless" accents and there are no regional accent options. I was looking forward to trying Computer Mancunian. But I can see why for marketing voiceover people want "global neutral British".
UX review: "failed to generate speech". Only the example phrases work.
Kettering accent generator when :(
Who uses this term? English, Welsh and Scottish accents sound nothing like each other!
And the Appalachian accents of Justified sound very different to the Mid-Atlantic accent of Frasier Crane -- yet to me, as an outsider, there is still an indefinable "Americanness" common to them all.
I believe it is more of self fulfilling prophecy imo. Some quality you treat as American AFTER you learn it is an american accent rather than something you see as american before (or regardless of whether) you even know if it is american
In the UK we use the phrase "American accent" and it's OK. It means "there exists an American who would use this accent" not "all Americans use this accent".
That said, when I use the term British accent, I do usually mean English, I think. Sorry. Also sorry for all the times I used England when I meant UK, or UK when I meant Great Britain, or vice versa.
I believe the correct expression would be "British accents".
HTZc3SNl.js:1 Failed to generate speech: Error: Invalid API response format at Z (HTZc3SNl.js:1:29240)
(Also struggled getting it working at all as others already noted.)
Awesome stuff.
Meanwhile the rest of the world thinks an American accent is either "Travis Bickle" or "Yosemite Sam."
That might work, but not for selling to Brits because they expect some sort of a local accent. Universal/unlocalised voice does not sound natural or believable to them.