Speech clarity with DECtalk 5 and Speakup.

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.  I didn't use DECtalk 4.6 with speakup very long, so maybe I'm
just used to DECtalk 5.
I noticed setting the pitch in speakup to 2 for male voices and 3 for
female voices seems to make them clear and understandable.
Speech-dispatcher only has 7 voices, so not all DECtalk voices are
available.  I changed the female2 voice from Windy to Rita and
now use the Rita voice.  I liked Betty years ago when I ran Windows
but I can't get the Betty voice usable with DECtalk 5.
I added [:volume set 100] to the command in my dtk-generic.conf to
get the volume to the highest setting.  I'll attach my dtk-generic.conf
file incase there is something different I forgot.

Hope this helps.
          Kenny

On Sun, Aug 01, 2004 at 07:31:14PM +1000, Luke Yelavich wrote:
> Hi all.
> I am wondering if anybody has managed to get clearer speech output from DECtalk
> 5 with Speakup? I love the clarity of 4.61, but I also love the responsiveness
> of 5, compared to 4.61.
> 
> Suggestions welcome.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Luke
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
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# DECTalk software output module is based on the generic plugin for Speech
# Dispatcher. It means there is no C code written explicitly for
# this plugin, all the specifics are handled in this configuration
# and we call a simple command line client to perform the actual
# synthesis. Note that this is not an optimal solution, but
# it's reported to work.
#
# Please note that DECTalk software is currently *not* Free Software.
# You might want to look at Festival instead.

# GenericExecuteSynth is the shell command that should be
# executed in order to say some message. This command must
# stop saying the message on SIGKILL, otherwise it's useless.
# You can use the variables $LANG, $VOICE, $PITCH and $RATE
# which will be substituted for the appropriate value (you
# can modify this value, see other parameters).
# The command can be split into more lines, if necessary, using '\'.
# NOTE1:
# Users of previous versions of this configuration file need to rename their
# DECTalk command-line program back to `say', since speech dispatcher no
# longer installs a program with this name. Thus, the reason for
# renaming the client in the first place is gone.
# NOTE2:
# DECTalk software version 4.61 is known to occasionally stop reading,
# due to a buffering problem with the `say' program. So far, the only way
# I know of to fix this is to upgrade from DECTalk 4.61 to DECTalk 5.
GenericExecuteSynth \
"echo \"[:n$VOICE][:ra $RATE][:dv ap $PITCH][:volume set 100]\" >/tmp/dtk-speak.txt \
&& echo \"$DATA\" | fmt >>/tmp/dtk-speak.txt && say -fi /tmp/dtk-speak.txt"

# GenericStripPunctChars is a list (enclosed in doublequotes) of
# all the characters that should be replaced by whitespaces in
# order not to be badly handled by the output module or misinterpreted
# by shell.
# We need to strip `[' and `]', as these are DECTalk's
# command characters.
GenericStripPunctChars  "[]"

# AddVoice specifies which $VOICE string should be assigned to
# each language and symbolic voice name. All the voices you want
# to use must be specified here.
# NOTE:
# There is a multilingual version of DECTalk software, however I
# do not have it. Thus, only the US English voices are defined here.
# If you know about the other languages, please let us know on
# <speechd at freebsoft.org>

AddVoice	"en"	"MALE1"		"p"
AddVoice	"en"	"MALE2"		"h"
AddVoice	"en"	"MALE3"		"d"
AddVoice	"en"	"FEMALE1" 	"b"
AddVoice	"en"	"FEMALE2"	"r"
AddVoice	"en"	"FEMALE3"	"u"
AddVoice	"en"	"CHILD_MALE"	"k"

# These parameters set _rate_ and _pitch_ conversion. This is
# part of the core of the definition of this generic output
# module for this concrete synthesizer, it's not intended to
# be modified by common users.
# The resulting rate (or pitch) has the form:
# 	(speechd_rate * GenericRateMultiply) + GenericRateAdd
# while speechd_rate is a value between -100 (lowest) and +100 (highest)
# You have to define some meaningful conversion for each synthesizer
# NOTE:
# Because DECTalk cannot accept float values, we must force them to be
# integers.

GenericRateForceInteger 1
GenericPitchForceInteger 1

GenericRateAdd 338
GenericPitchAdd	225

# (These values are multiplied by 100, because DotConf currently
# doesn't support floats. So you can write 0.85 as 85 and so on.)

GenericRateMultiply 262
GenericPitchMultiply 175 

# Debug turns debugging on or off
# Debug 1

# DebugFile specifies the file where the debugging information
# should be stored (note that the log is overwritten each time
# the module starts)
# DebugFile "/tmp/debug-dtk-generic"