I have a mac mini, and am running windows on it viea bootcamp. I thought I remember a addon that would let you use the alex voice. MacOS Voices. CereProc's v5.0 Mac voices are supported on Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave. Download size and disk space usage are around 100MB-150MB. Power PC Macs (built before 2005) are not supported.
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As I write this, it's the Macintosh's 29th birthday. This takes me back to the Mac's very early days in the mid-eighties when, even then, its operating system was outfitted with synthetic speech capabilities. Heck, we even used to have a talking moose! And, who can forget? Using software called MacinTalk, it announced itself to the world by saying, 'Hello. I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag.'
The Talking Moose provided many Mac old-timers with hours of silly fun.Early voices were highly robotic and astonishingly crude by today's standards. Nevertheless, back then, it was downright awe-inspiring. This was something from the future! The synthesized Mac voices were used to entertain many a Mac aficionado at user group meetings across the world.Vestiges of early artificial-sounding voices are still present today as novelties for some light-hearted, geeky entertainment – or for the nostalgic. In a bit,I'll show you how to try these out for yourself.When OS X 10.5 Leopard was uncaged back in 2007, Apple included some new high-fidelity text-to-speech capabilities in the form of a single new voice called Alex.
This mellifluous male voice included breath and pause control to augment comprehension of the spoken words and phrases. As a result of this vast improvement, I immediately found the use of synthetic speech to finally provide value for me. I began using Alex to read articles and other text to me while I was engaged doing something else, and I found that I no longer needed to listen closely, straining to understand what was being said.The technology in Alex presents a huge advantage to those who, due to visual impairment, regularly require screen-reading capabilities.
Additionally, the higher quality voice is quite valuable to Mac users who might be learning english pronunciation and sentence formation.As for me, aside from the fact that text-to-speech is a huge help when my aging eyes are tired after a long day at the keyboard, I have found this capability to be incredibly useful as a proofreading tool for the very same articles you read in my How-To column here at TMO. Simply reading to catch typos and punctuation errors is one thing.
Having an entity read the article to me is invaluable. It helps me to hear how my words flow and how clearly the concepts and ideas express themselves.Alex is wonderful. But, he's overworked, and I have sent him out to pasture.Allow me to introduce you to someone.
Say hello to my little friend, Samantha. She is a Alex's sibling – a high-quality American English female voice which I find to be quite soothing and highly coherent. Starting with OS X Lion, Alex, Samantha and several other high-quality voices are available for you to choose from. Additionally, choices include international voices that will support several languages and dialects.Most of the high-quality voices are not pre-installed because the software voice files are quite large in size. But they are selectable, and you can sample them before deciding to automatically download and install them free-of-charge from Apple's servers.Let's jump in and see how this works.For OS versions prior to Mountain Lion, the voice options and controls are located in the Speech System Preferences panel. Starting with Mountain Lion, this has been renamed to Dictation & Speech.
Once in the panel, be sure to click on the Text to Speech tab.The Dictation and Speech System Preferences panel in Mountain Lion.Click the System Voice pop-up menu to reveal voices already installed in your system. The voices are organized by language, and the one marked with a check is the one currently set as your System Voice.Clicking on System Voice pops up a list showing all the installed voices. The checked one is the currently selected System Voice.For the really good stuff, select Customize at the bottom of the System Voice pop-up list. This will reveal a pane containing quite a few other voices available in several languages. High-quality voice, Alex, is pre-installed.
Notice that you can play a sample of any voice without actually having it installed. Simply select a voice and click the Play button.In the Customize pane, you can sample all voices and select ones to download and install.By ticking a checkbox, the selected voice will be added to your working list of ones shown in the System Voice popup menu. A yellow warning sign appearing beside the checked voice indicates that it is one of the new high-quality voices that you can obtain for free. The voice file is downloaded when you click OK. The Software Update mechanism handles the download and installation process.As you can see back in the Preferences panel for Text to Speech, you can select other features controlling behavior characteristics of the System Voice.
For example, selecting the checkbox labeled “Speak selected text when the key is pressed' lets you configure a keyboard shortcut to have the System Voice speak any selected text.Inside the Customize pane, you can sample and activate the goofy Novelty Voices.What about those goofy, but ageless, legacy voices I mentioned earlier? You know, the ones like Zarvox that makes your Mac sound like a constipated robot. How about Hysterical making your Mac sound like it has worked for days without any sleep?
Check these and more retro voices located in the 'English (United States) – Novelty' section of the Customize pane.Your System Voice can be used in many practical ways. I use Samantha most often for reading back selected text.
![Mac Alex Voice For Windows Mac Alex Voice For Windows](https://appsforwin10.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/aim-free-chat-app-for-pc-download-1024x600.jpg)
One way I activate this is by right-clicking (or Control-clicking) on any selected text and choosing Speech Start Speaking in the contextual pop-up menu.Right-clicking on selected text will allow you to have the text spoken with the System Voice.You don't have to be afflicted by poor vision to take advantage of the Mac's speech capabilities. I encourage you to play around with this feature, and explore the many interesting ways the System Voice can enhance your workflow.
Thanks to on the iPhone 4S, people are quickly getting used to hearing gadgets talk. Your Mac can talk, too. For using your Mac everyday, there’s, which is designed for people who are blind or have low vision.
If that’s more talking from your Mac than you need, you can use the Mac’s Text to Speech feature, where the Mac reads selected text. It can be handy to use in a presentation, or, if you use, you can create sound clips to use in videos or audio recordings.The default voice that your Mac uses for Text to Speech actually has a name: Alex. He has a pleasing tone and a certain warmth, but you have other choices if you're looking for something else. There’s Victoria, who’s the female equivalent of Alex; and Bruce and Katy, who are more robotic.
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Lion and Snow Leopard show a total of six voices available, but there are plenty more to choose from. In this how-to, you will learn how to change the system voice, as well as add new voices.Step 1: Activate Text to Speech Activating the Text to Speech key combination in Lion.To have your Mac read selected text out loud, go to System Preferences and open Speech; then under the Text to Speech tab, check the box for Speak Selected Text When the Key is Pressed. The default key combination in Lion is Option+Esc, but you can change it by clicking the Change Key button. In Snow Leopard, you have to define a key combination.Now whenever you want the Mac to read something out loud, you just select the text and press the key combo. You can, for example, have your Mac read an email as you settle in after arriving to work.Step 2: Change the voice The six default voices as they appear in Lion. Snow Leopard has the same six defaults.Sure, Alex sounds like a nice guy, but he won’t be offended if you want a change. Still in the Text to Speech tab of the Speech system preference, click on the System Voice pop-up menu.
You’ll see the voices, divided by gender. (In Lion, the female voices are listed first. In Snow Leopard, the male voices are first.) To see what each one sounds like, select it, and then click the Play button. You can use the slider bar to adjust the Speaking Rate.If you like one of the six voices, select it, adjust the Speaking Rate (if you want), close the window, and you’re done. If you aren’t satisfied with one of the six, you can add more voices.Step 3: Add new voices Additional voices in Lion.In the System Voice pop-up menu used in step 2, select Customize (or Show More Voices if you’re using Snow Leopard) at the bottom of the menu. In Lion, a new window will appear, with a list of different voices.
Many are designed for use with a particular language, such as German, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, or even South African English, and those voices will read American English with the inflections of the language it is designed for. To sample a voice, check its box and click on the Play button. Check the boxes of the voices you want, and then click OK. The OS will need to download the voice, so you’ll be asked to confirm that you want to install it.
If you click Install in the confirmation window, the Apple Licensing Agreement will appear. You’ll need to agree to it to proceed.The complete list of voices available in Snow Leopard.In Snow Leopard, after you select Show More Voices, you need to open the System Voice pop-up menu again. You’ll notice that the list has expanded. To sample a voice, you need to select it, and then click on the Play button in the Text to Speech tab of the Speech preference.
Unfortunately, you don’t get the language choices that are available in Lion.Lion users: If you want a Siri-like voice on your Mac, install Samantha, located in the English (United States) Female section. Samantha doesn’t sound exactly like Siri, but it’s close.
If you adjust the speaking rate, you can get closer to a Siri sound-alike. Snow Leopard doesn't have Samantha or another Siri-like voice.Step 4: Talk talkOnce you’re done adding new voices and you’ve found one you like, select it, adjust the Speaking Rate if you want, and then close the Speech preference window. You’re done.When you want to use Text to Speech, select the text and press the key combo you defined in step 1. Some apps, such as TextEdit, have text-to-speech built in, so you can use the app’s menu command instead.
(It's Edit - Speech - Start Speaking in TextEdit.) Samantha was a key contributor to Macworld senior editor Roman Loyola’s performance in the.
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