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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>If
you already have a copy of Kurzweil 1000, why not give that a shot? I’ve
used it to convert PDF, braille files, and of course scanned print material
into MP3 audio using the Neospeech voices—Kate and Paul. I very
much enjoy converting texts to audio and listening to the audio in a Victor
Stream, for example. I’ll drop in level one bookmarks at every
chapter and create separate audio files for each chapter. Of course, you
can do that on a per-page basis if you need to get that granular. Indeed,
you can bookmark that book any way you want, and then create separate audio
files based on your bookmarking plan. It might be impractical to do, but
you could even bookmark each paragraph. Normally, for the kind of
personal reading I’m doing, I’m content to bookmark chapters.
The Neospeech Kate voice is a personal favorite of mine, and I choose the
high-quality audio setting to do my conversion. It comes out sounding
fine for voice work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>The
personal philosophical question you have to answer is, do you speed Kate up at
the Kurzweil end or just let her run normally and then assume the listener will
adjust the speed on his or her playback device? I run these at pretty
rapid rates through Kurzweil 1000, then just run my Stream at the normal
speed. The advantage to that is slightly smaller files.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Now
I must confess I’ve never tried this with anything mega-complicated like some
kind of hard-core math or engineering book. But doing this on reasonably
straightforward texts works really quite well, and there really are no audio
artifacts or weird sounds that happen as a result of the conversion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>It’s
all a very subjective thing, but I enjoy the Neospeech voices more than the
AT&T ones—less audio fatigue for me, which means the ability to
listen longer and retain my interest in what I’m hearing better.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Regards,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Nolan<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Nolan Crabb<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Director of Assistive Technology<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The Ohio State University<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>2054 Drake Center, 1849 Cannon Dr., Columbus, OH 43210<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Ph. (614) 735-8688<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>E-mail: crabb.15@osu.edu<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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