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>
> What, in the list's humble opinion, is the most versatile, and the
> best all-around Text-to-Speech software out there?
>
Do you mean text-to-speech (as in it "reads" type and speaks whatever
text is present) or speech-to-text (as in some audio source speaks and
it produces onscreen text of what was said)?
If you mean the latter, then Dragon's "Naturally Speaking" is the
stand-alone application available to the consumer and small business
that I've heard has the best success. Some more powerful commercial
titles might be out there that I don't know. As far as recognizing
speech from a pre-recorded source I'm not sure how effective any of them
will be--the paradigm for most packages is that you have to "train" it
by reading a set block of text in your own speaking voice so it learns
how you pronounce certain vowels, consonant clusters, dipthongs (illegal
on some beaches, mind you), and other verbal constructs.
Obviously pre-recorded audio cannot be made to "read" the standard text
block, so it would have to try translating "untrained" and would likely
make more mistakes. Worse yet, if you train it in your voice and then
let it have a go at the pre-recorded audio in someone else's voice, that
would really stand a good chance of mucking things up.
Just my $0.0147239685, adjusted for inflation.
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