What's the advantage of a hardware synth?

[Gregory Nowak]

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My personal opinion on the subject is as follows.

On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 12:41:17AM +0000, Jonathan Duddington wrote:
> 1.  It doesn't affect the computer's sound system, which can therefore
> play other sounds unaffected by the TTS.  This could probably be
> achieved for a software synth by using two sound cards.
> 

I feel that this isn't really an issue anymore, especially now that
dmix is available under alsa, providing a software mixer for sound
cards that aren't multichannel.

> 2.  System startup messages can be spoken before the point when the
> sound system and synth software is initialized and working.  This would
> be overcome by the proposed "Spoken Boot" feature.
> 

I'd say this is the greatest advantage of a hardware synth for me. Not
only for speaking startup messages, but also giving you speech all the
way until reboot/shutdown, which isn't possible with software speech
yet, since the processes responsible for providing software speech get
killed as part of the shutdown procedure. Arguably, this isn't as
important as the startup messages, but I still like to know at times
exactly what my system is doing as part of the shutdown process. Also,
from what I understand, spoken boot would be prerecorded sound files,
letting you know the progress during startup. If that's what they
would be, then they still wouldn't replace the combination of speakup
and a hardware synth, when it comes to informing the user as to what
exactly is happening, by giving the user all the details that a
sighted user gets, once speakup loads.

> 3.  Problems with installing and setting up a software synth.
> 

Yes. While the procedure isn't too difficult to replicate once you've
been through it for the first time, I feel that it isn't a walk in the
park for someone doing it for the first time, even if that person has
a wealth of experience in working on linux, or even unix systems.

> 4.  Prefer the sound of the hardware synth voice to those currently
> available with software synths.
> 

This isn't as true as the above reasons. I'm sure I wouldn't be the
only one to say that some hardware synths have a worse speech quality then
espeak does for example. On the other hand, being able to choose
between the use of a doubletalk pc, an accent pc (at least before it
died on me), a braille 'n speak, and festival/flite/espeak via
software speech, I still prefer the doubletalk hands down. The speech
of synthesizers is a highly personal preference though, so I wouldn't be too
surprised if someone responded to this saying that he/she absolutely
hates the doubletalk speech.

> 5.  Limitations of computer processor power or memory, although I doubt
> this is an issue now.
> 

I'd agree, though see reason 7 below your quoted reasons.

> 6.  The hardware synth offers some feature not available in the
> software synths.

Well, I guess you could say this is true for the doubletalk at least, both pc
and lt models. The doubletalk can play pcm files, play music via a
tone generator, generate dtmf tones, like those used in dialing
telephones, and it also has prerecorded word lists in I believe both
male, and female voices. Finally, it can act as a playback-only
soundcard under win9x systems. Admittedly, I don't remember the last
time I even played with any of these features, but the fact is that
they are there, and that no software synth currently has these
features, as far as I know.

7. Responsiveness. This partly relates to reason 5 above. I wouldn't
   say that a serial synth is more responsive then a software synth,
   (I think they're about equal, though
   espeak/speechd-up/speech-dispatcher is probably more responsive
   then a serial synth). However, I do think a synth like the
   doubletalk pc for example, is more responsive then a serial, or
   software synth. I think this has to do with the fact that it is
   connected to the machine via an internal isa slot, has its own RAM,
   and has its own processor. I think that this however can't be said
   for all internal synths, because my opinion for example is that the
   accent pc, another isa synth, isn't as responsive as the doubletalk
   pc is. As far as I know, the accentt pc doesn't have its own CPU
   and RAM, and it is definitely an older technology than the
   doubletalk pc is.

Greg



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