Anyone recomend a good natual sounding text-to-speech program for Win2000?

Thanks

There are various TTS engines out there. The best one on the market at the moment is the Speechify product. A demonstration can be found here.

There are other products from Nuance, Fonix, and L&H, but none of these offer a decent sounding English (UK) voice.

However, depending on what you are looking to do with the application will determine the costs. If for example you are using it within a IVR application then you will need to have a license for each instance the application is used, and the licenses for most of the TTS engines are about £500+ (exc. VAT and Support prices). So it can soon become a very expensive option if used for example in a PRI line as you will require possibly 30 x £500+.

Speechify does however come with a batch file generator that allows you to create WAV files using the TTS engine, which is alternative way of using it. ;)

Microsoft do their own TTS engine which is free, but like many of the other free ones, very synthesized.

If you want to find out more about TTS engines, then drop me a mail if you wish.

Hey that speechify is pretty damn good thats for sure!

Here's what I think anyway - :D