New Speech??

[Jonathan Duddington]

In article <20060906030801.GA26279 at omnibase.migliorelli.org>,
   Paul Migliorelli +1-303-552-6970 <paulmigs at migliorelli.org> wrote:

> Hi all.  I've come to decide with my current state of hearing,
> probably the only software speech I feel I can use is neo speech. 
> Any potential for having that type of voice for the things we like
> to run?

W. Nick Dotson <nickdotson at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> > What's neo speech?
> VoiceWare's digitized human speech speech engine, Kate and Paul are
> the female and male voices respectively.

Does Neospeech run on Linux?  The demo piece sounds comparable with
"AT&T Natural Voices" and "ScanSoft RealSpeak", but perhaps those don't
do Linux (I have them running here on Windows).

I'm curious. Have you tried eSpeak ( http://espeak.sourceforge.net ) ? 
I'd be interested to hear how it compares with a modern commercial
synth for someone with hearing difficulties, for the purpose of
intelligibility.  Its speech isn't as natural as the commercial synths
of course, but that's not necessarily the same as intelligibility.