TEXT-TO - SPEECH CONVERTER

A text-to-speech converter includes a text-to-speech engine receiving source text and converting the source text into speech data. A read mechanism reads speech data from the text-to-speech engine and writes the speech data to a buffer. A throttle mechanism reads speech data from the buffer and conveys the speech data to a playback operation. The throttle mechanism triggers the read mechanism to read data from the text-to-speech engine and writes the speech data to the buffer so that unread speech data in the buffer remains ahead of speech data read by the throttle mechanism by at least a predetermined amount.