Recently I purchased and downloaded some speech-to-text voices from ATT&T, for the Imac (I need not to be always staring at a monitor, due to eyestrain).

The voices are actually OK, and interactive demos are available on <a href="http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos"their website. The cost for 2 voices and the app, is about US 50 bucks, which isn't bad.

However, I found some glitches in the app, even though my system does meet the minumum operational requirements for RAM and CPU. So, I wrote them:

Hello,

I have a few technical questions regarding my purchase of AbleReader for Mac.

I am finding the Mike and Crystal voices run very well providing there
is no other signifcant load on the CPU - otherwise the voices stumble and pause. Overall I am very pleased with the quality of the voices.

However there are several minor glitches with which I hope you could advise me:

1) The ATT&T voices only play through the left loudspeaker alone although all other Mac voices play through both speakers. I have no other audio problems, but with the AT&T voices the right speaker is mute.

2) I can't control the voice speed on the AbleReader - the slider control is not highlighted with the ATT&T voices. However it is highlighted for the other Mac voices.

3) Sometimes AbleReader hangs (or freezes) when I try to Pause and then Resume speaking. Similarly sometimes when I try to Stop then Start. I wait for quite some time, while the spinning rainbow ball appears. My only recourse is then to Force Quit the Ablereader.

At other times there are no problems at all with these operations and so I can't figure what's happening here.

I would appreciate any assistance with these issues. As mentioned I do allow the application the vast percentage use of CPU and RAM, and that I have no other operational problems with my G3 Imac.

Yours sincerely,

I got a quick reply from a subsidiary company called Nextup:

These are all known issues with AT&T Natural Voices on the Mac, and we have reported each problem to AT&T. At this time I don't know when we'll have another release of Natural Voices availabe that will address these. We currently disable the Speed and Pitch sliders in AbleReader when an AT&T voice is selected, because the voices do not support the speed and pitch adjustments.

Sorry I don't have a better answer for the problems you're seeing.

NextUp.com
Listen and Learn Anywhere
http://www.nextup.com

.. to which I simply replied, with thanks for the quick response, and best regards.

But, on reflection some days later, I'm wondering whether these types of problems are standard in the software industry. I'm inclined not to make a fuss, because apart from these glitches, the voices *are* really good. Was it right for me to give them leeway, given this is cutting-edge software, and not too expensive? - or, should ATT&T not release their stuff while they know it still has problems?

Just interested in any opinions, thanks.