is there some list of offline-only text-to-speech tools one could peruse if they were looking for a voice for themself :boost_ok:

better question: is there any text to speech that doesn't use neural networks or other types of classic or newly-labelled AI or did that stop with dectalk?

yes i expect worse sounding results :boost_ok:

@atax1a is there any way to customise the voices or are you stuck with that selection

@mavica_again theres some tools out there to insert new pronunciations and such, but the voices only have like, a rate parameter. conceivably one could write a new voice but idk where to start on that

@atax1a sounds not any better than dectalk then, which is much more customizable with control codes

@atax1a sounds not too dissimilar to dectalk (and from what i remember it sounding like, they're probably using dectalk as a starting point)

difference is i don't think there's a way to get macintalk on a modern windows computer without emulating a whole macintosh is there? i already have a command line dectalk so this doesn't help much

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@atax1a by which i mean, if i wanted something that sounds like dectalk and needs arcane controls to make it sound different, i already have that

i'm looking for other options newer/better than dectalk and it looks like there's just no such thing without getting into sampled or AI territory

@mavica_again the early-2000s windows software we were thinking of was called AT&T Natural Voices — i'm sure newer versions probably have picked up the AI taint, but yeah i think there isn't much out there that's better for your purposes than dectalk

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