One of the Holy Grails of home computing is achieving a natural sounding, conversant computer voice, like the LCARS voice of the Starship Enterprise, or HAL in 2001. Ok, maybe not HAL so much.

The built-in voices of OS X are better than most, to be sure, but it’s not quite Majel Barrett-Roddenberry level yet; the choices we currently have are still a bit wooden and mechanical. Certain third-party apps can do better, as we’ve previously posted, but we’re still a long way.

With Leopard, we’ve come much closer though.

Welcome Alex, the new voice of Mac OS X.

Apple’s new synthetic voice is more lifelike and natural, based on patented technologies they’ve developed themselves. There are new techniques for pausing and fine breath control that makes Alex sound much better than Bruce or Vicki.

Listen to a sampling of Alex here.

Wouldn’t it be great to walk into someone’s house or office and get his Mac to play the songs on your iPhone or iPod Touch remotely on his big speakers?

TUAW reports that it’s possible. All you need do is install an app called Firefly on your iPhone or iPod Touch, let it build your mobile music database and you’re good to go.

Here’s how it’s done:

Navigate to http://home.mike.tl/iphone using Safari on your device. This installs a new app source onto Installer.app. Alternately, run Installer and add the url to the Sources tab.

This makes Firefly appear on your list of installables. Install and run Firefly, and give it anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to build your database (the length of time depends on how many songs you got).

That’s basically it.

Make sure the iTunes you intend to play from has enabled Library Sharing and has wifi, and that the firewall of the Mac allows communication. Your gadget’s playlist will appear on any iTunes you come within range of, and there you go - if it asks for a password, just say “dottie”, by the way.

You learn something new everyday.

Ambrosia Software has released the next gen iteration of a much loved app called WireTap Pro, which let you record virtually anything that came out of your Mac’s audio port - welcome WireTap Studio, the full-featured, full-service, grown-up version of the little ol’ app that could.

Far from just being an audio capture application, WireTap Studio does what Pro used to do, but does it way better, featuring (among other wonderful things):

• Lossless recording
• the ability to change compression later on down the road (even if you recorded at a clunky radio level you can bump it up to the highest resolution available after the fact)
• the ability to record from two sources
• Lossless audio editing
• full Audio Unit effects support
• drag-and-drop exporting to any format
• create podcasts with ease, with any compression or format
• Live Preview - to preview encoding settings on real time (this you gotta see!)

While not quite professional studio level, this baby’s far more than we can expect for something that is still shareware. (This is something my director friend Mike Cabardo would love to have on his Mac.) Goes for US$69, US$30 for upgrading from WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro. The Doodler gives this one 8 of 10 Apples.

One of the Doodler’s most-favorite-of-all-time-extreme-to-the-max apps is the SRS iWow Plug-in, which tweaks audio from iTunes to create fantastic audal soundstages and environments that make you disbelieve that all this goodness is actually coming from your two cheap, tinny, bargain speakers. The plug-in lets you adjust bass, focus, stereo separation, and definition from your own preferences or the built-in presets and make you feel like you owned Wharfdales.

It’s certainly a plug-in I can’t imagine being without. It’s the best US$20 I ever spent.

Well, SRS has an update available for download as we speak. iWow 2 now lets you save your personal presets, and adds  auto-presets based on the material you’re playing (”Cruise Control”), and more of its own. Best of all, it adds Movie Mode, which has the ability to create. Virtual. Surround. Over. Headphones. (Granted, this is only with the SRS 360 Headphones, but still…)

It usually sells for US$29.99, but the introductory promo gives it to you at US$19.99, with upgrades for old users at US$11.99. There’s even a Free Trial, which I urge you to take so you can be a true believer.

Go get SRS iWow 2 here. iWow indeed.

The last few major holdout music acts who don’t want their stuff available on the iTunes Store used to be a trio: the Beatles, Radiohead and Led Zeppelin. Now it’s just a duo, since Led Zep has caved and allowed some of their songs on iTunes.

Led Zeppelin, creators of that old sing-along/karaoke classic Stairway to Heaven, enemy of piracy and hater of digital music has sold 200 million analog copies of their albums in the past. But now they’re looking to add to that, so they had a change of heart and put together a specially assembled digital set of their hits for download on Apple’s online music store. The compilation album titled Mothership includes Stairway and Dazed and Confused and a bunch of other hits. The songs were specifically chosen by band members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, and will be available beginning November 12.

Best to squeeze every drop you can, at their age. Now let’s hope everyone follows suit and climbs the stairway to heaven.