Emacspeak discussion list

["D.J.J. Ring, Jr." <n1ea AT arrl.net>]

I understand that development for an emacspeak speech server for the high quality Voxin Embedded voices from Oralux, I'd like to be a tester of this. Is there a beta or alpha of this?

If you haven't heard the new voices, here is an email I posted to the SLINT support list (below).

Best regards,

David Ring

As many of you know, Oralux.org has just released extremely high quality premium voices for some languages and dialects.

To show everyone what high quality the Zoe Premium American English voice is, I made a recording of it along with the still excellent IBM TTS outloud voice which Slint will configure to be used for emacspeak. I understand that development is underway for the new embedded Voxin voices so that they will have an emacspeak engine just like IBM TTS Outloud and espeak have currently.

This recording is temporarily available here, if either Didier or Gilles wish to use it, please download it and upload it to your server space as I will delete it in ten days or so.

https://qsl.net/n/n1ea//slint/slint.mp3

They still have the Compact, Pro and High versions as well as the newest Premium versions, but the old IBM Outloud TTS voice is now unavailable, but the one you might have purchased in the past still works and the purchase URL for it will get you the latest version.

Here is the current price for Voxin + Vocalizer Embedded for the different versions, Compact is the smallest, and is fastest, Premium is the largest size files, and a fast computer is desirable.  Contact oralux for guidance.

The discounts are only available when you purchase multiple voices in the same time.  Again, contact oralux.org for more information.

Compact 22.1 EUR

Pro 26 EUR 36%

High 29.91 EUR 36%

Premium 29.91 EUR 36%

Those voices are marked "Premium" on this page: https://oralux.org/voice.php

Advice from Gilles Casse of contact AT oralux.org about getting these voxin voices in the text console.  It works flawlessly but follow these instructions exactly, or if it fails, uninstall the voxin voices using the voxin installer with the -u switch to uninstall.

Here's how to get the Voxin Embeded voices - including the latest extremely high quality voices - in the text console.

Here is what you must do to get voxin screen reader in text console with speechd-up and 

orca in the graphical user interface:

Orca:

First, install Voxin (+Vocalizer) as root user which installs voxin system wide.

Second, select the voxin voice using the Orca menu.

Configuring speechd-up for the console screen reader.

First, launch the following command in the console (text-based environment) as root: 

"speak-with speechd-up". 

Second, as root user, edit /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf with nano, using ctrl + w 

to find the line "DefaultModule espeak-ng" and replace "espeak-ng" with "voxin" so that the line 

reads "DefaultModule voxin", save the file using ctrl + o, and exit nano with ctrl + x, then reboot your computer.

After reboot, you will have speech in the text consoles.

For Slint, if you have the now unavailable IBM TTS Voice for Voxin, install that, and use the utility "switch-on emacspeak" and you will have the high quality voxin voice in the console, but when you run emacspeak, you will have the IBM TTS engine that is inside emacspeak.

It is understood that

Currently only IBM TTS and espeak emacspeak speech engines are available.

Configured this way, Slint will use either the IBM TTS (voxin outloud) or the espeak voices, when you run "switch-on emacspeak" you will be asked if you wish to use a Voxin voice, and if you do, emacspeak will use the IBM TTS voice if it is installed.  If you DO NOT have the IBM TTS voice on your system, answer "No" to that question as emacspeak needs a voice that has an emacspeak speech engine, so it will by default use espeak-ng.

I for one will be looking for the emacspeak release of the voxin embedded speech engine for emacspeak.

Best wishes to all,

David Ring