speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Georgina Joyce]

Hi

Well here my LTLK works well on this debian lenny system with speakup.
I've no interest in using it with orca because I quite like espeak.
Because my first experience with a talking computere was with HAL and
the Apollo 1 synth and espeak is considerably better than that to my
ears.  However, I wanted to point out that quite a bit can be done via
the console in respect of audio editing.  Perhaps soundgrab and sox
doesn't attract you but they're a very powerful combination.  But I
accept that I'm happier on the commandline where as others are better
with a GUI.  

My vinux walk through recieved about 30 cuts and in a couple of places
you can hear it because I basically got thed up with it and bored.  It's
probably not a good example but it was all done on the commandline.  

Thanks.



On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 04:22 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> All,
> 
> There still seems to be misunderstandings on what I'm trying to say.  
> Again, I really don't mind paying a reasonable amount for software 
> speech, assuming I can afford it.  The problem is that I've never yet 
> heard software speech that I liked.  The other problem is that I don't 
> like using non-free software but I don't think I could get used to 
> ESpeak.  My favorite voice is the hardware DEC-talk Express.  I can use 
> it to read books, email, work on my other Linux boxes, etc.  I can 
> listen to it for hours without growing tired of it.  It has a very fast 
> speech rate while still being understandable.  It doesn't have a muffle 
> like most software synths, specifically the software DEC-talk.  It can 
> easily be customized to have the exact pitch and inflection I want.  
> When I bought it, it was around $1200 US and is still worth it, even 
> though the price dropped since then.  I understand that the USB version 
> isn't as flexible.  I've tried many different sets of speakrs for 
> software speech, but all either have too much bass, a muffle or static.  
> Probably the best for reading was Realspeak but it was very, very slow.  
> I've even tried software speech on a high-end stereo system.  That did 
> help, but it still wasn't as good as my old DEC-talk Express.  I guess 
> my next favorite would be the Trippletalk, but it mispronounces things 
> and has other problems, like stuttering and a fairly small text buffer.  
> One really great thing about the DEC Express is that if I'm reading and 
> the power goes out, it stores at least two screens of text in its 
> buffer, so it will keep reading for a few minutes.
> 
> As I said, I'll look at Voxin.  Perhaps it's not as bad as I think.  I 
> know speakers do have a lot to do with it and it's partially what I'm 
> used to, but what I really want is to just use my hardware 
> synthesizers.  Software speech is enough of an issue for me that I have 
> put off really exploring Orca.
> 
> Also, one thing not mentioned here is my other reason for not leaving 
> Windows.  That is a lack of GUI audio software.  I'm surprised that no 
> one else has pointed this out, but a really big problem with software 
> speech and audio production is that you don't want speech in your 
> recordings.  Even if you have multiple sound cards or a good 
> multichannel card, a good microphone will still pick up software speech, 
> I know from experience.  Even if you use headsets, it's still very 
> inconvenient when you're doing restoration and editing to hear speech in 
> your ears at the same time as the sound you're concentrating on.  I work 
> with old time radio shows which have many pops and clicks.  It's hard to 
> hear the disc noise with speech chattering away in my ears.  On the 
> other hand, with hardware speech I can't hear it at all with a headset 
> on, but at least I don't have to repeat the same half second of sound 
> multiple times because the speech wouldn't shut up.  That's the problem 
> I'm having now on a Windows machine with only software speech.  I'm sure 
> there's an easy solution, but the volume of all software synths seems to 
> dominate all other sound, even if the volume is lowered.
> 
> Michael Whapples wrote:
> > As for voxin, if you weren't pleased by eloquence, you are unlikely to 
> > be pleased with voxin as it uses IBM viavoice which sounds the same as 
> > eloquence (or at least very close, I think the voices are very 
> > slightly different).
> >
> > As for contributing to espeak, you could suggest how it could sound 
> > better, it may not require altering the actual code it may be a matter 
> > of altering the voice files. I don't mean it in a bad way, but you 
> > seem to be hard to please with speech output, it may help if we knew 
> > what makes a voice good to you.
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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-- 
Gena

M0EBP

http://ready2golinux.com