Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Gary Cramblitt]

On Monday 05 June 2006 14:47, Garrett Klein wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> 	Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module in
> the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. Some of these may not be correctable, as
> I'm used to Eloquence on the other operating system.
>
> 1. Too slow--I want to be able to crank this baby up to at least 600 wpm.
> 2. Volume level--The voice is incredibly soft compared to other sounds on
> the system, so that when I play music with the synth at a decent volume, I
> get blasted. 3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various
> things it chokes on, chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it
> choke on wikipedia search pages. I even wrote a little shell script to
> restart speech-dispatcher (which, annoyingly enough, I can't just kill with
> 'killall -9 speech-dispatch,' nor can I 'pidof speech-dispatch' to even
> find out its pid). 4. Can there be more of a noticable inflection on
> exclamation points?
>
> Hope this stuff helps the developer of the module.

Thanks for feedback.

1.  The talking rate currently defaults to the default rate of the IBMTTS 
synth.   You can adjust speed in three ways.  a) Get your application to 
increase speed by sending SSIP SET RATE command.  b) Uncomment and adjust 
DefaultRate line in speechd.conf file.  c) Uncomment the 
IbmttsVoiceParameters lines in the ibmtts.conf file and increase the numbers 
in the Speed column.

2.  With the DefaultVolume parameter in speechd.conf defaulting to 100, the 
ibmtts module is already setting the volume to maximum, according to the eci 
technical docs.  I don't know if it can go louder.  Will investigate.

3.  Will investigate grave accent crashing.  Are there other inputs you can 
give us to investigate?  What voice (both Speech Dispatcher and IBM TTS) are 
you using when it crashes?

4.  Inflection is up to the synth.  You might be able to increase inflection 
by changing Pitch Flc in the aforementioned IbmttsVoiceParameters lines.

-- 
Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)