Espeaks Software Synth

[Kirk Reiser]

"Michael Whapples" <mikster4 at msn.com> writes:

> I guess that problem with the symbol lookup error is due to you using portaudio v19, you want v18 (uninstall v19). I probably can help with the compilation of portaudio as I have now managed on my desktop using slackware (I guess Robby is using slackware as slapt-get was mentioned). The solution, go to www.portaudio.com and download portaudio_v18.zip. unzip it somewhere (I did it in /usr/src/). Change to the portaudio directory (cd /usr/src/portaudio_v18/), and make a Makefile link to the Makefile.linux (ln ./Makefile.linux ./Makefile). Now just run "make" and "make libinstall". You now need to create the link for the lib (ln /usr/local/lib/libportaudio.so /usr/lib/libportaudio.so.0) assuming you didn't change the installation directory. Now espeak should run.

Well, if you are compiling from source not quite.  I have to admit I
cheated and installed the debian libportaudio-dev package which gave
me everything I needed from a portaudio perspective.  After compiling
you have to copy the espeak-data directory to /usr/share and then copy
the speak binary to /usr/bin.  There doesn't appear to be an
installation rule in the Makefile but that isn't really important.

It sounds quite good for a 350kb synth.  A British accent and a bit
heavy on the pitch shifting while reading but not unpleasant to
listen to in my opinion.  Of course, I am very forgiving when it comes
to synth voices so others may not find it as easy.

My congratulations to the authors of this bit of software.  It
definitely has potential.

  Kirk

-- 
Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061