That doesn't really change what I said though. It isn't crazy to call it useless without some form of ALS either. Given that old school synthesis has been able to do it for like 20 years or so.

How does state of the art matter when talking about usefulness? Is old school synthesis useless?

No? But is it not unreasonable to expect "state of the art" TTS to be able to do at least what old school synthesis is capable of doing? Being "state of the art" means being the highest level of development or achievement in a particular field, device, procedure, or technique at a specific point in time. I don't think it's therefore unreasonable to expect supposed "state of the art" text-to-speech synthesis to do far better at everything old-school TTS could do and then some.

> Being "state of the art" means being the highest level of development or achievement in a particular field, device, procedure, or technique at a specific point in time. I don't think it's therefore unreasonable to expect supposed "state of the art" text-to-speech synthesis to do far better at everything old-school TTS could do and then some.

Non sequitur. Unless the 'art' in question is the 'art of adding features', usually this phrase is to describe the quality of a very specific development, these are often not even feature complete products.