Voice Announcer for v8.08

[jlildngren]

I like the concept of adding the announcer feature to the draft software, has anyone found any free/cheap text to speech voices??? I checked out cepstral but they want $30 for a download. I am currently using windows XX so may finaly upgrade to vista (since it was free with the laptop purchase awhile back) and see if that makes a differece. The voice on XP is very robotic sounding.

[fansoft]

Hi Justin,

We actually did a LOT of searching, hoping to find some free resources for our users, but to no avail.
If anyone does happen upon something, please let us know, so we can help get the word out.

Regarding the Vista/XP question:
We did heavy testing on both system, and the Vista was considerably better than the XP. As you mentioned, the XP was quite robotic.
The unfortunate issue is that Vista only comes with one pre-installed voice.

Thanks!

FanDraft staff

[eckman]

Strongly considering buying this software for our draft(run league through myfantasyleague.com). Biggest thing holding me back is the announcing voice. I am using xp and it's bad and a lot of things you can't even understand with the robot voice. Any ideas on a fix for this?

[fansoft]

This page actually has a wealth of information on the subject:
http://www.fandraft.com/voiceannouncer.html

It basically breaks down to the quality of the voice.
Vista comes with a very natural voice. Otherwise, you may want to consider purchasing a professional one (which can cost as little $30-40).

Thank you,

The FanDraft staff

[uwnt1moore]

I did some searching on this topic and found some free microsoft voices besideds the robotic sam. Check out this link. The voices are alot better than sam and they are free!!!

Here is the forum link to the voices:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/ne ... &sloc=&p=1


this is the direct download:
http://www.text-speech.com/voices/Sp5TTIntXP.msi

Have fun drafting

[fansoft]

Thanks for the great advice!
We linked to your information on the bottom of our "Voice Announcer" information page (http://www.fandraft.com/voiceannouncer.html)

[Huskerfan]

Microsoft Anna comes with Vista but if you don't have vista here is a workaround:

http://text2go.wordpress.com/2007/09/05 ... indows-xp/

Out of all of them I like Anna the best. She is not as robotic as the others.

I actually did what the first poster suggested without installing Streets and Trips and it worked. If you can get the msttseng.msi file you'll have it made!

[theprophecy]

An update to this: you can download the 60-day trial of Streets & Trips 2009 for free at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=56ccd694-4df8-4602-abfc-aea24c1dbf45&DisplayLang=en&displaylang=en. This adds Anna to Windows XP. (Anna still remains after removing Streets & Trips, so you can immediately uninstall it.)

[pumpknhd]

It says to disable Windows Reader so I can get around that LH message, but I don't appear to have Reader installed. I looked in my "Add or Remove Programs" listing, and I don't see it there. So I searched my hard drive for "Reader", and only found some Adobe stuff - nothing from Microsoft. Is there something else I need to disable before I can use other voices?

[fansoft]

Are you sure it didn't say to disable "Adobe Reader", and not "Microsoft Reader"?