IVO Software has presented Eric — the latest English-speaking male voice based on IVONA — text-to-speech technology regarded as one of the best in the world. Eric comes from Hollywood and experts describe his way of speaking as “CNN style”.
Listening to Eric you get the impression that this is a person from the West Coast of the US talking to you. This is no accident as IVONA is speaking with the voice of an artist heard in Hollywood blockbusters and on CNN. When preparing Eric thousands of sentences uttered by this voice artist were recorded. Each sound was ascribed dozens of parameters thanks to which the text-to-speech system is able to understand a text within a fraction of a second and to find sounds which will sound most naturally. The effect is amazing. It is hard to believe that this is a computer application talking to you and not a genuine person.
To find out what Eric can say visit www.ivona.com. Just select his voice and then enter any text in the appropriate box for Eric to read it out. The service allows you to send your friends interesting pieces of information read out by Eric or to post them on a blog.
Welcome to the Team
Eric has joined Jennifer — a female voice also speaking American English. Due to the changes introduced recently Jennifer’s timbre has become even more dynamic. A similar couple is made up of Polish speaking voices — Ewa and Jacek. Also a Romanian voice — Carmen — is available.
Eric’s voice will be available in all IVO products making use of the text-to-speech technology, both in those dedicated to enterprises, such as IVONA Telecom, IVONA SDK, IVONA Professional, or IVONA Embedded, and in IVONA for the blind and visually impaired. Eric’s voice will also be in Expressivo — the popular computer application for home use which can be used to facilitate foreign language learning, read subtitles in movies, books, webpages and emails. The affordable price makes it possible for virtually anyone to enjoy the text-to-speech technology with Expressivo.
IVONA is regarded as the most natural-sounding text-to-speech system in the world
IVONA — the text-to-speech technology voicing Eric — is regarded as one of the best in the world. This is confirmed by the numerous honors and awards it has won. IVONA’s voice quality was also recognized at the prestigious international Blizzard Challenge. Two times in a row, in 2006 and 2007, it was considered one of the closest to a voice artist. IVONA’s and Expressivo’s creator, IVO Software Sp. z o.o. was established in 2001 and since then it has been involved in creation and development of speech synthesis products.
