Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Sean McMahon]

On my Pentium 90, there is a segnificant delay between what shows up on screen
and when flite speaks it.  If there is a large chunk of text, there's a few
second delay between different parts of that chunk.Does this problem exist on
faster systems like a 400 P2 or something you would buy new today?  Can I
controll this behavior on my system and if so how?
Is there a way to change how flite pronounces words like a custome dictionary.
For example I'd like it to say debian with a short e and say certain words as
two seperate words.  If these customizations are possable, are they controlled
in speakup, speechd_up, speech dispatcher or flite.
Sean

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Janina Sajka]

Wow, a Pentium 90? Amazing that it runs at all!

May I say that I am unhappy with the lack of responsivness using
software speech with Speakup on a 1.13 Ghz machine? So, I can barely
grok a Pentium 90.

Sean McMahon writes:
> On my Pentium 90, there is a segnificant delay between what shows up on screen
> and when flite speaks it.  If there is a large chunk of text, there's a few
> second delay between different parts of that chunk.Does this problem exist on
> faster systems like a 400 P2 or something you would buy new today?  Can I
> controll this behavior on my system and if so how?
> Is there a way to change how flite pronounces words like a custome dictionary.
> For example I'd like it to say debian with a short e and say certain words as
> two seperate words.  If these customizations are possable, are they controlled
> in speakup, speechd_up, speech dispatcher or flite.
> Sean
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.494.7040
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina@freestandards.org		http://a11y.org

If Linux can't solve your computing problem, you need a different problem.

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Luke Yelavich]

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On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 08:55:13AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> May I say that I am unhappy with the lack of responsivness using
> software speech with Speakup on a 1.13 Ghz machine? So, I can barely
> grok a Pentium 90.

Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a 
ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Luke:

I've tried both flite and DEC Talk 4. I haven't bought 5 and don't plan
to. Response is the same. The speech is extremely choppy so that I'm
only comfortable hearing it while reviewing the screen.

Last year I had a Thinkpad T30 which was much better. So, I don't
understand where the breakdown is.

Luke Yelavich writes:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 08:55:13AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > May I say that I am unhappy with the lack of responsivness using
> > software speech with Speakup on a 1.13 Ghz machine? So, I can barely
> > grok a Pentium 90.
> 
> Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a 
> ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
> - -- 
> Luke

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Luke Yelavich]

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On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 09:15:00AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, Luke:
> 
> I've tried both flite and DEC Talk 4. I haven't bought 5 and don't plan
> to. Response is the same. The speech is extremely choppy so that I'm
> only comfortable hearing it while reviewing the screen.

I have also tried DecTalk 4.61 with Speakup, and found much the same 
behavior. However as you are probably aware, the quality of speech in 5 
is not as good, however I would rather responsiveness over quality at 
this point in time.
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Janina Sajka]

So, you're saying 5 resolves the responsivness issue? To ask it another
way, is DEC Talk 5 working better than flite with respect to
responsivness?

Luke Yelavich writes:
> I have also tried DecTalk 4.61 with Speakup, and found much the same 
> behavior. However as you are probably aware, the quality of speech in 5 
> is not as good, however I would rather responsiveness over quality at 
> this point in time.

RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[jim grimsby]

Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a 
ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
Is that with speech dispatcher?
If it is could you send me your configuration files or tell me what you
did to get it working?  Thanks! I got an error while installing it. Not
sure how to resolve it but it speaks with the say command and I still
can not get it speaking with speech dispatcher.  My final goal is to use
software speech with speakup and I want it to be the dectalk.  Thanks. 

RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[jim grimsby]

Hi, it might be your sound card.  I saw this with a program called
saytime saytime responded very well with one sound card but was very
choppy with another and it took much longer to speak with the second
card.  

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca] On Behalf Of Janina Sajka
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 2:15 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its
pronounciation


Hi, Luke:

I've tried both flite and DEC Talk 4. I haven't bought 5 and don't plan
to. Response is the same. The speech is extremely choppy so that I'm
only comfortable hearing it while reviewing the screen.

Last year I had a Thinkpad T30 which was much better. So, I don't
understand where the breakdown is.

Luke Yelavich writes:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 08:55:13AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > May I say that I am unhappy with the lack of responsivness using 
> > software speech with Speakup on a 1.13 Ghz machine? So, I can barely

> > grok a Pentium 90.
> 
> Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a
> ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
> - -- 
> Luke

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Steve Holmes]

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I have both a 1.5 GHz and a pentium 120 Laptop and software speech
works successfully on my laptop but is rather sluggish.  I've tried
both Flite and DECtalk 4.61 on there.  I do have a question though.

How easy is it to install 5.0 over the older 4.61? can I just install
the new one over the top or do I need to uninstall / remove the old
one first?  I wanna experiment with responsiveness of 5.0 vs 4.61
especially on my laptop.

- -- 
HolmesGrown Solutions
The best solutions for the best price!
http://ld.net/?holmesgrown
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Kirk Reiser]

I am going to make a suggestion which may help your chopiness and may
not.  The reason I say may not is because I don't understand all the
facts from what you folks are talking about.

I have noticed with the newer kernels 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 software
speech is very disjointed almost like you only get a few letters or a
portion of a word at a time.  This is do to a newly instituted kernel
configuration option called something like Big Kernel Lock
Preempting.  Hmmm, let me go look it up exactly: CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL
should be set to no.  The menu choice which is under processor
features looks like: Preempt The Big Kernel Lock.  You would only set
this to no if you are using software speech because in most cases it
is wise to have it on.

If you check your configuration and this is on which is the default
then when you turn it off you should have significantly better
software speech output quality at least.

  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Luke Yelavich]

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On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 09:42:55AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> So, you're saying 5 resolves the responsivness issue? To ask it another
> way, is DEC Talk 5 working better than flite with respect to
> responsivness?

Yes DecTalk 5 is more responsive.
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Luke Yelavich]

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On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 09:46:48AM EST, jim grimsby wrote:
> Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a 
> ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
> Is that with speech dispatcher?

> If it is could you send me your configuration files or tell me what you
> did to get it working?  Thanks! I got an error while installing it. Not
> sure how to resolve it but it speaks with the say command and I still
> can not get it speaking with speech dispatcher.  My final goal is to use
> software speech with speakup and I want it to be the dectalk.  Thanks. 

To use speech-dispatcher with speakup, you will also need to download, 
build and install speechd_up. There is no tarball release as far as I 
know, so you will have to grab it from CVS and build it yourself.

Go to http://www.freebsoft.org and go into the projects section to find 
out more on how to do this.

The only changes I have made to my speech-dispatcher configuration are 
what is instructed. Adding the AddModule line for the DecTalk 
configuration, and changing the default.

Hope this helps. Feel free to reply if you need more info.
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Luke Yelavich]

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On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 10:00:56AM EST, Steve Holmes wrote:
> How easy is it to install 5.0 over the older 4.61? can I just install
> the new one over the top or do I need to uninstall / remove the old
> one first?  I wanna experiment with responsiveness of 5.0 vs 4.61
> especially on my laptop.

Just run the installer program that comes with DECtalk. It will ask for 
your serial number, which you enter. It will give an error at the end of 
the installation, but don't worry. Just run ldconfig as root as that is 
what it tries to do, but the syntax in the bash script is wrong.

You should then be good to go.
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Luke Yelavich]

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On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 10:45:18AM EST, Kirk Reiser wrote:
> I have noticed with the newer kernels 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 software
> speech is very disjointed almost like you only get a few letters or a
> portion of a word at a time.  This is do to a newly instituted kernel
> configuration option called something like Big Kernel Lock
> Preempting.  Hmmm, let me go look it up exactly: CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL
> should be set to no.  The menu choice which is under processor
> features looks like: Preempt The Big Kernel Lock.  You would only set
> this to no if you are using software speech because in most cases it
> is wise to have it on.

I am running a speakup modified Ubuntu 2.6.10 kernel here, and 
according to my kernel config, that option doesn't even exist. Hoewver I 
still experience what you have described with DecTalk. Sometimes when 
displaying a fresh page of an email for example, only a couple of 
letters are read out at a time. However, it is not hard to work around, 
and doesn't really bother me. I am running a development version of the 
distro as it is. :)
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Janina Sajka]

Interesting, Kirk, because what I get is exactly as you describe. For
example, in my home directory, I often hear my name in my prompt as:

ja 
ni
n
a

That's pretty choppy.

Unfortunately, it seems Fedora leaves this variable off, as you suggest
for software speech. I'm running a 2.6.10 kernel, and the only "preempt"
cvariable in the entire config is:

CONFIG_PREEMPT is not set


Kirk Reiser writes:
> I am going to make a suggestion which may help your chopiness and may
> not.  The reason I say may not is because I don't understand all the
> facts from what you folks are talking about.
> 
> I have noticed with the newer kernels 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 software
> speech is very disjointed almost like you only get a few letters or a
> portion of a word at a time.  This is do to a newly instituted kernel
> configuration option called something like Big Kernel Lock
> Preempting.  Hmmm, let me go look it up exactly: CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL
> should be set to no.  The menu choice which is under processor
> features looks like: Preempt The Big Kernel Lock.  You would only set
> this to no if you are using software speech because in most cases it
> is wise to have it on.
> 
> If you check your configuration and this is on which is the default
> then when you turn it off you should have significantly better
> software speech output quality at least.
> 
>   Kirk
> 
> -- 
> 
> Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.494.7040
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina@freestandards.org		http://a11y.org

If Linux can't solve your computing problem, you need a different problem.

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Adam Myrow]

It could be a soundcard issue as well.  On my Dell, I find that if I were 
to run the software Dectalk directly, it sounds like a motorboat. 
However, if I run it using the aoss scripts, it sounds much better.  That 
is, it's an Alsa thing with this card.  So, if I want it to say "hello 
world," I'd type the line like:
aoss say -a "Hello world."  This gives me much better results with the 
Dectalk, but doesn't work with Flite.  Actually, as I recall, I didn't 
start having problems with Flite until I cranked up the speech rate. 
There are definitely some issues with various sound cards and Alsa. 
Another test is to try playing soundds at various sample rates.  I find 
that sounds sampled at low rates when played by Mplayer will be choppy, 
and there will be warnings on the console about underruns.  Older sound 
cards seem to be more reliable in terms of performance under Linux.

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Sean McMahon]

I'm on a 2.4 kernel, 2.4.27 but that is great info if/when I upgrade to 2.6.  Is
there anything in the 2.4 series that may help with software speech?
Sean
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kirk Reiser" <kirk@braille.uwo.ca>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 4:45 PM
Subject: Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation


> I am going to make a suggestion which may help your chopiness and may
> not.  The reason I say may not is because I don't understand all the
> facts from what you folks are talking about.
>
> I have noticed with the newer kernels 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 software
> speech is very disjointed almost like you only get a few letters or a
> portion of a word at a time.  This is do to a newly instituted kernel
> configuration option called something like Big Kernel Lock
> Preempting.  Hmmm, let me go look it up exactly: CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL
> should be set to no.  The menu choice which is under processor
> features looks like: Preempt The Big Kernel Lock.  You would only set
> this to no if you are using software speech because in most cases it
> is wise to have it on.
>
> If you check your configuration and this is on which is the default
> then when you turn it off you should have significantly better
> software speech output quality at least.
>
>   Kirk
>
> -- 
>
> Kirk Reiser The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[jim grimsby]

Hi, add the dectalk as a modgel and changed it to the efault no speech.
I am not ready to start the speakup part tell I have the dispatcher
working well.  Thanks 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca] On Behalf Of Luke Yelavich
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 3:54 PM
To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its
pronounciation


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 09:46:48AM EST, jim grimsby wrote:
> Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a
> ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
> Is that with speech dispatcher?

> If it is could you send me your configuration files or tell me what 
> you did to get it working?  Thanks! I got an error while installing 
> it. Not sure how to resolve it but it speaks with the say command and 
> I still can not get it speaking with speech dispatcher.  My final goal

> is to use software speech with speakup and I want it to be the 
> dectalk.  Thanks.

To use speech-dispatcher with speakup, you will also need to download, 
build and install speechd_up. There is no tarball release as far as I 
know, so you will have to grab it from CVS and build it yourself.

Go to http://www.freebsoft.org and go into the projects section to find 
out more on how to do this.

The only changes I have made to my speech-dispatcher configuration are 
what is instructed. Adding the AddModule line for the DecTalk 
configuration, and changing the default.

Hope this helps. Feel free to reply if you need more info.
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[jim grimsby]

Hi, also I got that error described I still get speech from the dectalk
say command.  Is there any thing I should do that the installer did not
do?  If so exact direction would be nice.  Maybe this is why I am not
getting speech threw speech dispatcher!


-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca] On Behalf Of jim grimsby
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 7:20 PM
To: 'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'
Subject: RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its
pronounciation


Hi, add the dectalk as a modgel and changed it to the efault no speech.
I am not ready to start the speakup part tell I have the dispatcher
working well.  Thanks 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca] On Behalf Of Luke Yelavich
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 3:54 PM
To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its
pronounciation


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 09:46:48AM EST, jim grimsby wrote:
> Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a ThinkPad 
> R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive. Is that with speech dispatcher?

> If it is could you send me your configuration files or tell me what
> you did to get it working?  Thanks! I got an error while installing 
> it. Not sure how to resolve it but it speaks with the say command and 
> I still can not get it speaking with speech dispatcher.  My final goal

> is to use software speech with speakup and I want it to be the
> dectalk.  Thanks.

To use speech-dispatcher with speakup, you will also need to download, 
build and install speechd_up. There is no tarball release as far as I 
know, so you will have to grab it from CVS and build it yourself.

Go to http://www.freebsoft.org and go into the projects section to find 
out more on how to do this.

The only changes I have made to my speech-dispatcher configuration are 
what is instructed. Adding the AddModule line for the DecTalk 
configuration, and changing the default.

Hope this helps. Feel free to reply if you need more info.
- -- 
Luke

Get my public GPG key here: http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt
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_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup



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Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
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RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Jim,

Check your speechdispatcher configuration file to make sure you have
selected english as the default language. My setup works fine and I will
be glad to send you my configuration files if you would like to see
them.

Chuck




-- 
The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (94% of Full)
"Things are in the saddle, and they ride mankind." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Visit my download site at http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[David Bruzos]

Hi Janina:
I made another posting explaining a fix that I found for the choppy speech problem.  It involves changing the priority of 
the speechd_up and speech-dispatcher programs.  On my laptop, it works very well, I get better speech than I ever have.   
Let me know if it works for you.

DB


On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 07:06:54PM -0500, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Interesting, Kirk, because what I get is exactly as you describe. For
> example, in my home directory, I often hear my name in my prompt as:
> 
> ja 
> ni
> n
> a
> 
> That's pretty choppy.
> 
> Unfortunately, it seems Fedora leaves this variable off, as you suggest
> for software speech. I'm running a 2.6.10 kernel, and the only "preempt"
> cvariable in the entire config is:
> 
> CONFIG_PREEMPT is not set
> 
> 
> Kirk Reiser writes:
> > I am going to make a suggestion which may help your chopiness and may
> > not.  The reason I say may not is because I don't understand all the
> > facts from what you folks are talking about.
> > 
> > I have noticed with the newer kernels 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 software
> > speech is very disjointed almost like you only get a few letters or a
> > portion of a word at a time.  This is do to a newly instituted kernel
> > configuration option called something like Big Kernel Lock
> > Preempting.  Hmmm, let me go look it up exactly: CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL
> > should be set to no.  The menu choice which is under processor
> > features looks like: Preempt The Big Kernel Lock.  You would only set
> > this to no if you are using software speech because in most cases it
> > is wise to have it on.
> > 
> > If you check your configuration and this is on which is the default
> > then when you turn it off you should have significantly better
> > software speech output quality at least.
> > 
> >   Kirk
> > 
> > -- 
> > 
> > Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
> > e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
> > phone: (519) 661-3061
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> 
> Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.494.7040
> Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com
> 
> Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
> janina@freestandards.org		http://a11y.org
> 
> If Linux can't solve your computing problem, you need a different problem.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[jim grimsby]

Yes please send me the files you are using!  

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca] On Behalf Of Chuck Hallenbeck
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 2:14 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: RE: Making flite more responsive and improving its
pronounciation


Jim,

Check your speechdispatcher configuration file to make sure you have
selected english as the default language. My setup works fine and I will
be glad to send you my configuration files if you would like to see
them.

Chuck




-- 
The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (94% of Full)
"Things are in the saddle, and they ride mankind." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Visit my download site at http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.

I'm using DECtalk e.  It was a free upgrade from version 4.  You might
want to try it and see if it fixes your problem.

I did impro8e the speech by adding additional palameters to my say
commands.
I added

[:dv ri 90 sm 0][:pe -380][:ra 350][:dv ap 130]

Hope this helps.
           Kenny
	   
On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 05:15:00PM -0500, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, Luke:
> 
> I've tried both flite and DEC Talk 4. I haven't bought 5 and don't plan
> to. Response is the same. The speech is extremely choppy so that I'm
> only comfortable hearing it while reviewing the screen.
> 
> Last year I had a Thinkpad T30 which was much better. So, I don't
> understand where the breakdown is.
> 
> Luke Yelavich writes:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 08:55:13AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > > May I say that I am unhappy with the lack of responsivness using
> > > software speech with Speakup on a 1.13 Ghz machine? So, I can barely
> > > grok a Pentium 90.
> > 
> > Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a 
> > ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
> > - -- 
> > Luke
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Steve Holmes]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Can you explain these parms a bit? Curious minds want to know.  How
did you come by the particular numeric values you did?

One other observation I'm noticing with DECtalk; When
speech-dispatcher first says "Software synth found," the DEC is at
something like Double pitch or some such.  I have to set a lower pitch
to get the voice to sound right for the rest of the session.  I'm
running Slackware 10.1 with the default compiler gcc 3.3.4.  This
sounds like a problem reported back with earlier versions of Redhat if
I recall.  Any ideas about the high pitch deal?

Thanks.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 10:00:25AM -0600, Kenny Hitt wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I'm using DECtalk e.  It was a free upgrade from version 4.  You might
> want to try it and see if it fixes your problem.
> 
> I did impro8e the speech by adding additional palameters to my say
> commands.
> I added
> 
> [:dv ri 90 sm 0][:pe -380][:ra 350][:dv ap 130]
> 
> Hope this helps.
>            Kenny
> 	   
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 05:15:00PM -0500, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > Hi, Luke:
> > 
> > I've tried both flite and DEC Talk 4. I haven't bought 5 and don't plan
> > to. Response is the same. The speech is extremely choppy so that I'm
> > only comfortable hearing it while reviewing the screen.
> > 
> > Last year I had a Thinkpad T30 which was much better. So, I don't
> > understand where the breakdown is.
> > 
> > Luke Yelavich writes:
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: SHA1
> > > 
> > > On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 08:55:13AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > > > May I say that I am unhappy with the lack of responsivness using
> > > > software speech with Speakup on a 1.13 Ghz machine? So, I can barely
> > > > grok a Pentium 90.
> > > 
> > > Is that with flite/festival? As I am using DecTalk 5 on a 
> > > ThinkPad R50, 1.4Ghz and it is very responsive.
> > > - -- 
> > > Luke
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 

- -- 
HolmesGrown Solutions
The best solutions for the best price!
http://ld.net/?holmesgrown
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Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.

I came up with those parms by reading the DECtalk manual and
experimenting.  They will work for Paul and Betty, but make other voices
sound really bad.  As usual for me, I didn't document my final result.
also, I just realized I pasted the parms from my weather script instead
of my dtk-generic.conf file.

The [:dv ap 130] and the [:ra 350] set pitch and rate to hard coded
values.  You don't want those for speech-dispatcher.

The 2 parms that are important are:

[:dv ri 90 sm 0][:pe -380]

The [:pe -380] option sets the "period pause" to the shortest value.
Basically, it makes the synth pause as little as possible between
sentences or lists where items end with a period.
The speakup driver for the DECtalk express also uses this value.

I went back and looked at the docs again, and realized it will probably
be easier for you to read them about the [:dv ri 90 sm 0] options.  They
change basic values of the voice.  The doc explains it better than I
could.  For the paul and betty voices, it makes them mumble less.
I downloaded the docs from the Fonix web site.  They are pdf files.

Your pitch problem is probably because the default pitch when speakup
starts with a software synth is 5.  I've found DECtalk software sounds
best at a pitch of 2 or 3. Flite and festival seem to sound good at
pitch 5, just not the DECtalk.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 01:23:26PM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> Can you explain these parms a bit? Curious minds want to know.  How
> did you come by the particular numeric values you did?
> 
> One other observation I'm noticing with DECtalk; When
> speech-dispatcher first says "Software synth found," the DEC is at
> something like Double pitch or some such.  I have to set a lower pitch
> to get the voice to sound right for the rest of the session.  I'm
> running Slackware 10.1 with the default compiler gcc 3.3.4.  This
> sounds like a problem reported back with earlier versions of Redhat if
> I recall.  Any ideas about the high pitch deal?
> 
> Thanks.
> 

Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Sean McMahon]

I think the first part of my subject was well answered last week: "making flite
more responsive", now how can I improve it's pronunciation?
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kenny Hitt" <kenny@hittsjunk.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation


> Hi.
>
> I came up with those parms by reading the DECtalk manual and
> experimenting.  They will work for Paul and Betty, but make other voices
> sound really bad.  As usual for me, I didn't document my final result.
> also, I just realized I pasted the parms from my weather script instead
> of my dtk-generic.conf file.
>
> The [:dv ap 130] and the [:ra 350] set pitch and rate to hard coded
> values.  You don't want those for speech-dispatcher.
>
> The 2 parms that are important are:
>
> [:dv ri 90 sm 0][:pe -380]
>
> The [:pe -380] option sets the "period pause" to the shortest value.
> Basically, it makes the synth pause as little as possible between
> sentences or lists where items end with a period.
> The speakup driver for the DECtalk express also uses this value.
>
> I went back and looked at the docs again, and realized it will probably
> be easier for you to read them about the [:dv ri 90 sm 0] options.  They
> change basic values of the voice.  The doc explains it better than I
> could.  For the paul and betty voices, it makes them mumble less.
> I downloaded the docs from the Fonix web site.  They are pdf files.
>
> Your pitch problem is probably because the default pitch when speakup
> starts with a software synth is 5.  I've found DECtalk software sounds
> best at a pitch of 2 or 3. Flite and festival seem to sound good at
> pitch 5, just not the DECtalk.
>
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 01:23:26PM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> > Can you explain these parms a bit? Curious minds want to know.  How
> > did you come by the particular numeric values you did?
> >
> > One other observation I'm noticing with DECtalk; When
> > speech-dispatcher first says "Software synth found," the DEC is at
> > something like Double pitch or some such.  I have to set a lower pitch
> > to get the voice to sound right for the rest of the session.  I'm
> > running Slackware 10.1 with the default compiler gcc 3.3.4.  This
> > sounds like a problem reported back with earlier versions of Redhat if
> > I recall.  Any ideas about the high pitch deal?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup