- To: tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Subject: Re: just a newbi problem, want to use festival, not flite with emacspeak
- From: "T. V. Raman" <raman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 10:57:23 -0700
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OK I undeerstand. I know that Janina has been saying she will
resell single user runtime licenses but I guess she hasn't yet
done so. tcross> Its nothing to do with how the server is
tcross> implemented. It is about finding a vendor who is
tcross> prepared to sell single runtime licenses. Last time I
tcross> checked, the smallest number you could purchase was a
tcross> bundle of 10 runtime licenses and this came out at a
tcross> bit more than the cost of the SDK.
tcross>
tcross> There has been reports of some sites who have said
tcross> they are going to sell single licenses, but last time
tcross> I checked this was still a plan and not actually
tcross> available.
tcross>
tcross> this issue has been raised a number of times on the
tcross> list. If you have details of where you can purchase a
tcross> single runtime license, it would be great if you can
tcross> post the details so that others can take advantage of
tcross> it and the details can go into the list archive.
tcross>
tcross> Personally, I don't think $300US is too much to pay
tcross> for a good quality stable software TTS for Linux -
tcross> but then again, I was lucky in that my employer
tcross> purchased mine in return for some proof of concept
tcross> web based speech demos.
tcross>
tcross> regards,
tcross>
tcross> Tim
tcross>
tcross>
tcross> T. V. Raman writes:
>>
>> so why do yu ned the Viavoice sdk - the waa the emacspeak
>> server is implemented, all you need is the runtime.
>>
>> >>>>> "tcross" == tcross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
tcross> Just a few points which may be of interest in this
tcross> thread.
tcross>
tcross> Festival is a very powerful and configurable TTS. It
tcross> can support quite a few different voices and has a
tcross> lot of parameters which can be tweaked to improve
tcross> synthesis. The "out of the box" configuration is a
tcross> general default that is likely to meet most users
tcross> requirements. However, I found (quite some time ago)
tcross> when playing with festival, I could get better
tcross> performance tweaking some of the settings associated
tcross> with festival and the voice tools. Unfortunately, it
tcross> was a while ago and I dont actually remember what all
tcross> the tweaks were.
tcross>
tcross> Festival supports voices from other sources and in
tcross> many distributions, you will get different quality
tcross> voices - for example, in Debian, there are both 8k
tcross> and 16k voices for US/UK english. The 8k voices don't
tcross> have the same quality, but will probably give better
tcross> performance on slower machines with less memory.
tcross>
tcross> Although I've never got around to it, mbrola voices
tcross> are supposed to provide very good quality voices with
tcross> festival. Voices from http://www.cepstral.com can
tcross> also be used with festival - they had a perl script
tcross> on their website that would allow you to import a
tcross> cepstral voice into festival. Cepstral voices are
tcross> good quality, but they lose quality significantly at
tcross> higher voice speaking rates. They are commercial
tcross> voices which you have to pay for, but they do have a
tcross> number of different languages available.
tcross>
tcross> IMO by far the best software TTS for emacspeak is
tcross> ViaVoice, which you can purchase from
tcross> http://www.wizzardsoftware.com. However, you have to
tcross> purchase the SDK and it costs over $300US.
tcross>
tcross> Second best for quality of speech is the software
tcross> dectalk. However, this TTS engine does crash
tcross> regularly under emacspeak (it works reliably under
tcross> speech dispatcher, but speech dispatcher is using it
tcross> in its most basic way and does not try to use the
tcross> in-line voice control codes emacspeak uses for voice
tcross> locking etc). The software dectalk is available from
tcross> http://www.fonix.com for about $100US.
tcross>
tcross> I used the softwar dectalk for quite some time and
tcross> managed to live with the regular crashes - all you
tcross> need to do is a C-e C-s when the TTS stops working
tcross> and verything is restarted. Although a bit annoying,
tcross> it provides good voice quality at high speaking
tcross> rates, which I think is important. I now use it as my
tcross> emergency backup TTS if I don't have a hardware
tcross> synthesiser for backup.
tcross>
tcross> HTH
tcross>
tcross> Tim
tcross>
tcross>
tcross>
tcross>
tcross>
tcross>
tcross> Lukas Loehrer writes:
>> >>
>> >> Some observations:
>> >>
>> >> I just tried speech dispatcher with festival again. I
>> am >> using fspeech dispatcher via speechd-el this time. I
>> am >> using the packages from Debian unstable.
>> >>
>> >> When using the flite output module of speech
>> dispatcher, >> responsiveness is the same as with eflite
>> in >> emacspeak. When using the festival output module in
>> speech >> dispatcher, some of the problems seen in espeakf
>> go >> away. Speech stops immediately when it
>> should. However, >> there is a noticeable pause between
>> the moment a command >> is issued and the corresponding
>> speech starts. I cannot >> tell if the pause is silence
>> generated by the tts or if it >> takes that long for the
>> speech to be synthesized. In the >> latter case, a faster
>> machine might in fact help.
>> >>
>> >> Thus, it seems that if one is looking for good >>
>> responsiveness, festival used through either espeakf or >>
>> speech-dispatcher should not be one's first choice. things
>> >> look differently if priorities lie with support for >>
>> multiple voices or languages.
>> >>
>> >> Best regards, Lukas
>> >>
>> >> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your
>> >> address on the emacspeak list send mail to >>
>> "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a subject of >>
>> "unsubscribe" or "help"
>> >>
tcross>
> --
> Tim Cross tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
> tcross>
> tcross> There are two types of people in IT - those who do
> tcross> not manage what they understand and those who do not
> tcross> understand what they manage.
> tcross>
> tcross> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> --
> Best Regards,
> --raman
>
>
> Email: raman@xxxxxxxxxxx
> WWW: http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/
> AIM: emacspeak GTalk: tv.raman.tv@xxxxxxxxxxx
> PGP: http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/raman-almaden.asc
> Google: tv+raman
> IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/#emacs
--
Tim Cross
tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
There are two types of people in IT - those who do not manage what they
understand and those who do not understand what they manage.
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--
Best Regards,
--raman
Email: raman@xxxxxxxxxxx
WWW: http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/
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