[petercooper]

I've pointed them to this thread to see what they think. Look forward to seeing this progress. (And as an aside, I really wish someone would crack the TTS 'uncanny valley' problem 100%. It's a surprisingly difficult problem.)

[jstclair]

There's quite a difference between the "normal" voices in OSX, and the high-quality ones. If you have a few spare gigabytes, try out the French, Spanish, and Swedish versions.

For my kids, it's at least a few minutes entertainment to make the computer speak high-quality foreign curse words.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20082143-263/how-to-ins...

[petercooper]

I'd never noticed this before - cool! Samantha and Tom in the US English section sound particularly good.

The only major problem I seem to perceive is that the transitions between certain words and phones aren't smooth enough and are jarring. It doesn't sound like they're far off but I guess 90% of the work is in the last 10% ;-)

[longzheng]

Thanks Peter. Already drafting email.

You're absolutely right about the TTS uncanny valley problem. We're betting on the fact that this is an industry effort. Currently we don't have the resources to really invest in the core TTS technology but always on the look-out for breakthrough/experimental tech.