On Nov 28, 1:37 am, Barry Salter wrote:
Because 99% of the time speech synthesisers are utter crap. Take the one
at King's Cross St. Pancras for example, which used to announce a Good
service on the Pick-addle-y Line when first installed. (Though that's
now been fixed).

That wasn't a synthesizer , that was just reassembling pre recorded
words and phrases. Theres a difference between synthesising a voice
and just playing back a sequence of .wav files. Modern synthesizers
admittedly don't sound truly natural but for train announcements who
gives a toss - its to provide information , not audition for Macbeth.
Half the time I can't even understand them anyway when they're done by
the station staff or driver. A computer couldn't do any worse. "This
hmmftta is delahhmfffdff behhmmmfhfhfh hmmfmmfmfm...".

B2003