speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Georgina Joyce]

Hi

You didn't mention cepstral voices. 

On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:08 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This is very well said. I've felt the same way for a long time which is 
> why I still use Windows for email and ssh to my Linux machines. I would 
> prefer to use Linux as my primary OS, but I have a few sticking points 
> as well. The biggest is the quality of ESpeak, exactly as you say. To 
> me, it reminds me of an Echo with a British accent. With Speakup, that 
> isn't a big problem because I have an external Doubletalk LT, a 
> Trippletalk and a DEC-talk Express. However, unless I'm mistaken, 
> (someone, please correct me here) there is no way to get Orca to use 
> hardware speech. I realize that there are better software synths out 
> there, but either they're just as bad (look at Festival), they're 
> non-free (Mbrola comes to mind), or they cost money, such as TTSynth. 
> Until there is a high quality speech synth for Linux that works with 
> Orca, I will not be completely switching.
> 
> My other sticking point is that there is no equivalent to Sound Forge or 
> professional audio editing software that's accessible. There are Sox and 
> Ecasound, but they aren't GUI apps and are difficult to use for long, 
> comprehensive editing and post-production. I like Wedit, but it has the 
> same limitations. I know there are GUI audio processors but I read that 
> they're not accessible. While I'm at it, it would also be nice to find 
> something for manipulating MIDI files, but I can get by with Timidity 
> for now.
> 
> James Homuth wrote:
> > Somewhat related, what's the likelyhood of Espeak voices getting
> > improvements to be more... I'm not sure what the word for it is, other than
> > human-sounding? That's been one of my main sticking points for why I'm still
> > with Windows on my primary machine; that, plus I've not until now had time
> > to test the accessibility of my particular preferred distribution. I did
> > hear a demonstration a while back of a version of Espeak, and while I could
> > definitely get used to it, I think I'd like it a whole lot better if it
> > didn't sound quite as robotic. I'm not saying it should equal eloquence by
> > any means, but the demo I heard kind of reminded me of the old Echo synths
> > used on the early Apple computers. Good, but could be better, IMHO. 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
-- 
Gena

M0EBP

http://ready2golinux.com