[Emacspeak] Re: Introduction & Voice Configuration Questions

[David J. J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John,

If you're speaking about me, I think you must have misunderstood.

I'll try to be clearer in what I say - and I know that with something 
that has four names it is confusing, because the web calls voxin by the 
names of IBM TTS, Voxin, Oralux, and ViaVoice.

In fact, when emacspeak is started with the command "emacs" a correctly 
installed installation using the IBM TTS Voxin voice says: "ViaVoice 
using ALSA".

Short version: only IBM TTS type of voxin works in emacspeak. Voxin 
Embedded doesn't work in emacspeak, only IBM TTS, Via Voice type does work.

Longer version:

The only Voxin voices that work in emacspeak are the old and very 
inexpensive IBM TTS voices.S

The newer Voxin Embedded voices currently being sold at oralux.org in 
addition to the previously mentioned IBM TTS voices (also called 
ViaVoice) are NOT compatible with emacspeak because there is NO speech 
server in emacspeak.  One has to be developed if these voices are to 
work.  The only software speech servers that currently exist are for 
espeak and outloud.  As previously mentioned outloud, IBM TTS, and 
ViaVoice are used interchangeably and mean the same thing.

As mentioned: voxin-say -L will tell you the voices you have installed.

Here's my voices after the command above.
voxin-say -L

Name,Language,Variant
american_english,en,US
zoe-ml-embedded-high,en,US


The first voice is the IBM TTS voxin voice, this WILL work in emacspeak, 
the second is a Voxin Embedded Voice which costs around $30.00 but 
cannot be used inside emacspeak.  It can be used in console and it can 
be used with orca.

Try the command "voxin-say -L" note the capital L.

Additionally the command on the next line should result in your hearing 
your voxin voice (or one of them if you have more than one voice) speaking.

voxin-say "Hello World" | aplay

If this causes problems simply reinstall your voxin voice.  If that 
doesn't work, uninstall the voice completely using the installer with 
the -u switch as in:

/voxin-installer.sh -u

I have no idea why sometimes it doesn't work, but in all cases either 
reinstalling or uninstalling makes it work for myself and the others 
I've helped.

Best wishes,

David









On 1/22/22 17:06, John Covici wrote:
 > Here is what I have for this file
 >
 > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 42 Jun 27  2021 /opt/oralux/voxin/rfs32/eci.ini
 > -> ../../../../var/opt/IBM/ibmtts/cfg/eci.ini
 >
 > but according to another poster on this list I need a different speech
 > server?
 >