Inflection in speech synthesis (was: Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher)

[Willem van der Walt]

Espeak has the potential to be the gnu software speech engine.
Festival is big and unresponsive.
The voice inflection in IBM's Viavoice can be changed with an in-line 
command.
I cannot recall what it is right now.
HTH, Willem


On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Hynek Hanke wrote:

> Justin Ekis pí?e v Po 05. 06. 2006 v 18:52 -0400:
>> You mentioned wanting more noticeable inflection. Have you tried any of
>> the other software speech options, and would you say the inflection is
>> better than some of them? Is it not as good as eloquence? That's the top
>> thing that sets eloquence above all software speech I've tried on linux
>> and I'd be disappointed if that wasn't the case here.
>
> Hi Justin and others,
>
> I'm interested if you or others tried Festival. Do you know it is
> possible to adjust the inflection span with
> 	(set-pitch-range value)
> in /etc/festival.conf (will soon be adjustable through Speech Dispatcher
> too)? Bellow is included a description of how to test it easily.
>
> Also I want to be sure nobody mistakes Festival voices with Flite
> voices. Even though they have the same name for using the same bases
> for their diphone databases, they are not the same voices at all.
>
> If you are still not satisfied with the inflection, could you please
> provide feedback on what is wrong with it (if possible, including the
> voice name) ?
>
> This is VERY important, because Festival is currently the most advanced
> Free Software synthesis tool to my knowledge. Most parts of the
> synthesis process, the databases etc. are not fixed by the author, but
> they are written as modules in Lisp and they can be fixed/rewritten as
> well as new modules can be added by third sides. Everything is
> configurable. So if people are interested in Free Software and the
> principles behind GNU, Linux and its technical features, the right way
> now to get a better synthesizer is to support Festival by providing a
> list of requested features and bug-fixes. (Another way would be
> to create a whole new framework for software synthesis, similar to
> Festival, but that would be a big project compared to this.)
>
> I do not claim I currently know anyone who has time and resources to
> work on it, but if a wish-list is created, someone might be found.
>
> Thank you,
> Hynek Hanke
>
> How to test inflection with Festival
> ====================================
>
> A way to test it is to run the festival binary
> 	$ festival
> and type in
>> (SayText "This is the default inflection")
>> (set-pitch-range 200)
>> (SayText "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, what is new? Inflection is
> bigger!")
>
> Once you are at it, you can also test the available voices. You get
> the list of available voices by
>
>> (voice-list)
>
> and then you can switch them by issuing a command composed by the
> string "(voice_", the name of the voice and the closing parenthesis.
>
>> (voice_kal_diphone)
>> (SayText "something")
>
> or
>
>> (voice_ked_diphone)
>> (SayText "something")
>
> and so on. For more commands, see Festival documentation. Maybe there
> are more settings that can influence inflection in a significant way,
> I'm CCing a Festival developer from Brailcom who can maybe say more
> about them.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
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