Monologue 97 - Oct/Nov '98

Monologue 97

The best writing flows off the page and sounds natural to the ears. Rather than reading to yourself or having an associate read to you, have the computer read your brilliant writing back to you. Monologue 97 from First Byte is a simple application that will read your documents back to you at the click of a button.

Monologue 97 installs easily from a CD-ROM. It includes a wide variety of voices, or SpeechFonts, to choose from. Choose either a male or female voice, ranging from deep to soft to whisper. Among the female voices, you can opt for gravelly or smoky. Or choose a standard U.S. Male or Female voice. Monologue 97 uses ProVoice technology to provide better audio compression and play back. Still, many of these voices initially sound artificial so you should experiment. Adjust the pitch and speed for the various voices and some allow even greater fine-tuning using Advanced controls. After playing with the settings, you should be able to find a voice that suits your taste.

Monologue 97 works with all your applications. Want to have someone read your e-mail to you? Select the text and hit the Monologue 97 button. It also works with your spreadsheets. This is a useful way to check for mistakes or typos. WordPerfect users should download the latest macros for use with WordPerfect 8.

Monologue 97 is a handy little application, particularly if you spend most of your time writing. Sometimes it is useful to have your words read back to you to judge for effect. Monologue 97 does a satisfactory job at a reasonable price.

Voice recognition software usually includes text-to-speech tools, but those packages cost two to three times as much as Monologue 97. If you don't need voice recognition, this is a great tool for giving voice to your words.

First Byte
(310) 793-0610
www.fbyte.com
Windows 95, NT

$69.95

Reviewed by J. Michael Jimmerson, attorney, Milwaukee, Wis.

Oct/Nov '98 Issue

PROS
Legal citation forms included in vocabularies.Inexpensive application for converting text into spoken word.

CONS
Voices sound artificial.

VERDICT
Buy it if you don't already have a speech recognition program with this function.