Monologue Gives PC Power of Speech
In the everyday world, speech is our most common form of communication. But as soon as we sit down at our computers, chances are we enter a silent world where all communication is visual.
So it was quite a revolution when I gave my PC a set of vocal cords and began to listen to it talk.
Monologue 2.0 from First Byte in Santa Ana, (714) 432-1740, is a $149 software program that gives a PC the power of speech. It is an upgrade of SmoothTalker, which First Byte introduced in 1984.
Unlike digitized speech, which is essentially a digital recording of actual spoken words, Monologue creates synthesized speech by reading the text or numbers on your screen and pronouncing them according to an elaborate set of rules.
The software is memory-resident, meaning that when you start it, the program loads itself into your computer’s memory and then returns control to you so that you can run other programs.
When you are ready to ask Monologue to read to you, press the “hot key” combination of Alt-T and a small menu appears on the bottom line of your screen, along with a square marker in the middle of the screen. You move that marker, either with cursor keys or a mouse, to highlight the portion of the screen that you want to be read. Then pressing the Enter key starts the voice.
A male or female voice is available, with bass or treble tone. The built-in speaker in a PC serves as the voice outlet, but it doesn’t sound very good. At least not on either machine I tested.
To show what can be expected with a better speaker, First Byte included an external speaker system for the PC in the review package it provided. The $80 unit is called Speech Thing, manufactured by Covox Inc. of Eugene, Ore., (503) 342-1271. It is a speaker about 2.5 inches in diameter in its own plastic enclosure, complete with an on-off-volume switch. (Other audio systems are available and supported by Monologue, such as Sound Blaster, Echo PC+, Hearsay, IBM Speech Card, IBM PS/1 audio card and audio built into certain Tandy computers.)
A simple connector attaches to the printer port of the computer, with the printer cable then attaching to that connector. In other words, voice signals are passed out the printer port where they are intercepted by the speaker. If you leave the speaker on when you print, you will hear static as the signals are sent on to the printer.
The whole setup is very easy to use. First Byte deserves special praise for providing one of the easiest and most foolproof software installation procedures that I have seen. A lot of the big software publishing houses should do so well.
Is computer speech just a gimmick? Why would you want it? Several answers come easily to mind. First, anyone who is visually handicapped would surely benefit from having the computer read back what has been typed.
So can many other users. I’ve always had a hard time proofreading my writing from the computer screen. Either I fail to see that words I thought I wrote aren’t really there, or I fail to see extra words that are on the screen and shouldn’t be. Either way, proofing while Monologue reads the text imposes a discipline that makes it more likely to catch mistakes.
The voice is understandable, much more so with the Speech Thing speaker, and even has a degree of inflection, rising at the end of questions and falling at the end of sentences. But it doesn’t sound like a voice for which English is its native language. There is a singsong quality to it that is unnatural.
It also seems to get a little tired toward the end of long sentences, then perks right up again at the beginning of the next sentence.
I couldn’t hear any difference in speed or quality whether I ran it on a fast 386 computer or an old AT compatible. Word pronunciation is remarkably good. I was amazed at how well it did with a list of names, some of foreign origin.
It will not pronounce words that are written in all capital letters. It spells them instead. There is a way to help it pronounce odd words better by entering them in an exception table along with the phonetic sounds. You can fine tune the process, with Monologue pronouncing the word each time, until you are satisfied.
Monologue would be a very useful tool in proofing rows or columns of numbers entered into spreadsheets or databases. Simply highlight a column of numbers to be checked and compare the originals as Monologue reads what has been entered on the screen.
The program also can be set up to read an entire file. One way you might use that would be to have Monologue read your electronic mail as you listen while attending to something else on your desk.
Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.
