16k voices

[Janina Sajka]

Right on, Jacob.

But, there is another software synth that's worth the money, and it's
less money than software DEC Talk. Go check out the Linux voices
available at http://www.cepstral.com. Cepstral are the commercial side
of Festival and Flite, by the way.


Jacob Schmude writes:
> From: "Jacob Schmude" <jschmude at adelphia.net>
> 
> Hi
> Honestly, I'd recommend a hardware solution at this point. There are 16k voices out there for festival, flite and freetts. However, that doesn't necessarily 
> have anything at all to do with the quality of the voice. Festival, flite, and freetts (software synthesizers) all use the same basic voices. These voices are, in 
> my opinion, terrible. Oh, they're clear due to there being 16K, but their inflection is almost nonexistant and, due to the pronunciation they use, they tend to be 
> difficult to understand. You can get the software synths and voices at:
> festival: http://www.festvox.org/
> flite (festival lite): http://cmuflite.org
> freetts (java-based speech engine) http://freetts.sf.net/
> As of right now, festival is the only software synthesizer supposedly supported by speakup 1.5. I say supposedly because I've never gotten it working 
> satisfactorily. You need to apply a patch and run an add-on daemon, but it's incredibly slow to respond, doesn't allow changing of voice parameters like rate 
> and pitch, and hasn't been updated or changed since april according to the filename. You can get the patch at:
> http://users.wpi.edu/~blinux
> if you want to try it.
> IMHO, the only good linux software synth is software dectalk, but that costs $50 and speakup doesn't work with it yet. Hint, hint, speakup developers? Any 
> chance it'll ever be supported?
> If you need help getting the software synthesizer working, let me know. It can be a bit of work, especially if you're going to try festival. Software Speech is 
> one of the two major areas in which linux lags behind, I think, the other being OCR.
> HTH
> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 23:12:47 -0400, Sina Bahram wrote:
> 
> >Hello, I read a few earlier posts on this and other lists about some 16k
> >voices availible for linux. I was wondering what would be availible, and
> >if 16k voices are truly the highest quality availible these days.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175