Installing Speakup Mods (Part 1)

[Doug Sutherland]

This procedure worked for me to get festival running with
speakup. Sending in 3 parts ...

These are instructions for installing speakup with modifications
to use a sound card and software speech synthesizer. Speakup is
a system that sends linux console output to a speech synthesizer.
Normally speakup requires an external synthesizer, but with the
modifications made by Worchester Polyechnic Institute, it can
use a PC sound card and software synthesizer. Following are
instructions for installing festival, speakup, and the speakup
mods for software synthesis. These commands were tested on
slackware 9.0, using the 2.4.20 standard linux kernel. Here
are the home pages for the main software components:


The Speakup Project
http://www.linux-speakup.org/

Linux for the Blind
(Modifications to Speakup for Software Synth)
http://users.wpi.edu/~blinux/

Festival Speech Synthesis System
http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/



Install Festival

The first step is to install festival speech synthesis system.
The home page is here:

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/

The installation instructions are here:
http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/manual/festival_6.html#SEC12

The distribution files for festival are here:

http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/speech_tools-1.2.3-release.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festival-1.4.3-release.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festlex_CMU.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festlex_POSLEX.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festlex_OALD.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festvox_ellpc11k.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festvox_kallpc16k.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festvox_kallpc8k.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festvox_kedlpc16k.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festvox_kedlpc8k.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festvox_rablpc16k.tar.gz
http://festvox.org/packed/festival/1.4.3/festvox_rablpc8k.tar.gz

You may want to check and see if there is a more recent version
of festival and edinburough speech tools (needed for festival),
Check this page to see the latest release info:

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/download.html


Not all of the above listed lexicon (festlex) or speech databases
(festvox) are required. Here is a description of the files:

festvox_kallpc16k.tar.gz - American English male voice `kal' 16kHz version
festvox_kallpc8k.tar.gz  - American English male voice `kal' 8kHz version
festvox_kedlpc16k.tar.gz - American English male voice `ked' 16kHz version
festvox_kedlpc8k.tar.gz  - American English male voice `ked' 8kHz version
festlex_CMU.tar.gz       - American English lexicon
festvox_rablpc16k.tar.gz - British English male voice `rab' 16kHz version
festvox_rablpc8k.tar.gz  - British English male voice `rab' 8kHz version
festlex_OALD.tar.gz      - British English lexicon
festlex_POSLEX.tar.gz    -`Part of Speech' lexical models

According to the festival documentation, you can get festival
working with an american english male voice using just the
following files:

speech_tools-1.2.3-release.tar.gz (required for festival)
festival-1.4.3-release.tar.gz     (festival distribution)
festvox_kallpc16k.tar.gz          (16kHz american english male)
festlex_CMU.tar.gz                (american english lexicon)
festlex_POSLEX.tar.gz             (lexical models)

Download these five files, and any additional desired
festvox (speech database) or festlex (lexicon files)
to /usr/src

The speech tools package needs to be installed before
festival can be installed. Install speech tools:

cd /usr/src
tar xzvf speech_tools-1.2.3-release.tar.gz
cd speech_tools
./configure
make
make install

You can test the installation with
make test

The speech tools documentation indicates that the
speech_tools/bin directory should be added to the PATH.
One easy way to do that is to edit /etc/profile and
modify the PATH there.

Next step is to exctract the rest of the festival install
files in the /usr/src directory. They will all extract to
/usr/src/festival (the lexicon and speech databases will
extract within the festival distribution:

cd /usr/src

tar xzvf festival-1.4.3-release.tar.gz

tar xzvf festlex_CMU.tar.gz
(do the same for the other festlex files)

tar xzvf festvox_ellpc11k.tar.gz
(do the same for the other festvox files)


Then compile the festival distribution:

cd /usr/src/festival
./configure
make
make install


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