speakup using different synths with software speech?

speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tyler Littlefield]

Hello list,
I was wondering if it was possible for speakup to use eloquence. I could 
probably get used to espeak, but I'd rather not suffer the headache if I can 
just use eloquence somehow.


Thanks,
Tyler Littlefield
Web: tysdomain.com
email: tyler@tysdomain.com
My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Gregory Nowak]

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

I believe TTSynth is what you're looking for.

http://ttsynth.com

Greg


On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:11:43PM -0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> Hello list,
> I was wondering if it was possible for speakup to use eloquence. I could  
> probably get used to espeak, but I'd rather not suffer the headache if I 
> can just use eloquence somehow.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Tyler Littlefield
> Web: tysdomain.com
> email: tyler@tysdomain.com
> My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

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Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[William Hubbs]

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

Tyler,

I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on linux
is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.

William

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:54:00AM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> I believe TTSynth is what you're looking for.
> 
> http://ttsynth.com
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:11:43PM -0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> > Hello list,
> > I was wondering if it was possible for speakup to use eloquence. I could  
> > probably get used to espeak, but I'd rather not suffer the headache if I 
> > can just use eloquence somehow.
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Tyler Littlefield
> > Web: tysdomain.com
> > email: tyler@tysdomain.com
> > My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> 
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> 
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
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> H+AAn3xRshFhnys1bljru9LFrO0R6YgW
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> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
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Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Hermann]

am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Tyler,
> 
> I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on linux
> is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
> 
He can look here:
http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is 
required.
Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen 
something in the install script.
Hermann

RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[James Homuth]

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. Anyway,
this was more a rambling/curiosity thing and by no means an attempt at
criticism as I've not actually gotten it running locally yet, so for all I
know my version of Espeak could already be improved over the demo I heard.

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Hermann
Sent: May 31, 2009 3:59 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Tyler,
> 
> I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on linux 
> is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
> 
He can look here:
http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is required.
Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen
something in the install script.
Hermann
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Christopher Moore]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 09:58:59PM +0200, Hermann wrote:
> am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > Tyler,
> > 
> > I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on linux
> > is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
> > 
> He can look here:
> http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
> I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
> Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is 
> required.
There is also a speakup connector available on the ttsynth page.  This 
allows you to run voxin or ttsynth with speakup without 
speech-dispatcher.  
The only problem I've found with the ttsynth speakup connector is that 
it doesn't create a pid file so that it can't be stopped with a standard 
init script.  I'm working on a patch for this.
I actually prefer the speakup connector  because you get 
notified of capital letters with pitch change.  Not having a pitch 
change option for caps is a shortcoming of speech-dispatcher.
Although voxin is designed for Debian based distros, I've gotten it to 
work on arch linux.
> Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen 
> something in the install script.
> Hermann
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Chris

RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Willem van der Walt]

There is a way to use mbrola voices with espeak.  It is more 
human-sounding, but getting used to espeak standard voice does not take 
long.
Regards, Willem


On Sun, 31 May 2009, 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. Anyway,
> this was more a rambling/curiosity thing and by no means an attempt at
> criticism as I've not actually gotten it running locally yet, so for all I
> know my version of Espeak could already be improved over the demo I heard.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Hermann
> Sent: May 31, 2009 3:59 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?
> 
> am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > Tyler,
> > 
> > I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on linux 
> > is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
> > 
> He can look here:
> http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
> I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
> Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is required.
> Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen
> something in the install script.
> Hermann
> _______________________________________________
> 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
> 

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RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[James Homuth]

Thanks for that information, as much as it doesn't really answer the
question except to say if you want improvement, use another synth. Is that
to mean we won't be seeing any such improvements with Espeak? 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Willem van der Walt
Sent: June 1, 2009 3:38 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

There is a way to use mbrola voices with espeak.  It is more human-sounding,
but getting used to espeak standard voice does not take long.
Regards, Willem


On Sun, 31 May 2009, 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. Anyway, 
> this was more a rambling/curiosity thing and by no means an attempt at 
> criticism as I've not actually gotten it running locally yet, so for all I
know my version of Espeak could already be improved over the demo I heard.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca 
> [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Hermann
> Sent: May 31, 2009 3:59 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?
> 
> am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs
<w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > Tyler,
> > 
> > I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on 
> > linux is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
> > 
> He can look here:
> http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
> I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
> Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is
required.
> Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen 
> something in the install script.
> Hermann
> _______________________________________________
> 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
> 

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http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Willem van der Walt]

Not quite, What I am saying is that you can get a human sounding voice 
using espeak by adding mbrola to the mix.
If you like, you can email me and I can make you an example of what it 
sounds like.
I do not think Jonathan plan to change his synthesis method, but he has 
made some changes which made the sound a little less harsh and a bit more 
base.
Regards, Willem

 

On Mon, 1 Jun 2009, James Homuth wrote:

> Thanks for that information, as much as it doesn't really answer the
> question except to say if you want improvement, use another synth. Is that
> to mean we won't be seeing any such improvements with Espeak? 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Willem van der Walt
> Sent: June 1, 2009 3:38 AM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?
> 
> There is a way to use mbrola voices with espeak.  It is more human-sounding,
> but getting used to espeak standard voice does not take long.
> Regards, Willem
> 
> 
> On Sun, 31 May 2009, 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. Anyway, 
> > this was more a rambling/curiosity thing and by no means an attempt at 
> > criticism as I've not actually gotten it running locally yet, so for all I
> know my version of Espeak could already be improved over the demo I heard.
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca 
> > [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> > On Behalf Of Hermann
> > Sent: May 31, 2009 3:59 PM
> > To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> > Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?
> > 
> > am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs
> <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: SHA1
> > > 
> > > Tyler,
> > > 
> > > I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on 
> > > linux is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
> > > 
> > He can look here:
> > http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
> > I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
> > Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is
> required.
> > Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen 
> > something in the install script.
> > Hermann
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
> > 
> 
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> This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail
> legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard. 
> The full disclaimer details can be found at
> http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.
> 
> This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
> MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.  MailScanner thanks Transtec
> Computers for their support.
> 
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> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

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Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tony Baechler]

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. 

RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[James Homuth]

That's just it, exactly. And the general attitude of "if you want
improvement, use another package" just doesn't sit all that well with me.
Again, it's why I still hang onto Windows on my primary machine. Like I
said, I can probably get used to espeak with speakup and/or orca. But I
think it would still be somewhat hard to listen to for lengths at a time.
Again, my opinion. I've met people who actually prefer Espeak over
Eloquence, though I may never understand why other than one's still being
developed for linux and the other isn't.

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Tony Baechler
Sent: June 1, 2009 2:09 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

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@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[al Sten-Clanton]

"That's just it, exactly. And the general attitude of "if you want
improvement, use another package" just doesn't sit all that well with me.
Again, it's why I still hang onto Windows on my primary machine. Like I
said, I can probably get used to espeak with speakup and/or orca. But I
think it would still be somewhat hard to listen to for lengths at a time.
"Again, my opinion. I've met people who actually prefer Espeak over
Eloquence, though I may never understand why other than one's still being
developed for linux and the other isn't."

In using orca some, I got more used to espeak than I thought I could.  As
you suggest, though, I have trouble using it for a long stretch.

The "use another package" attitude isn't a bad one, if there's a package
that does what you want.  I'd probably make my own if I knew how, but I'm a
long way from that, and I'd sure never live long enough to make all the
packages I'd like anyway.

Al


 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of James Homuth
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 2:12 PM
To: 'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'
Subject: RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

That's just it, exactly. And the general attitude of "if you want
improvement, use another package" just doesn't sit all that well with me.
Again, it's why I still hang onto Windows on my primary machine. Like I
said, I can probably get used to espeak with speakup and/or orca. But I
think it would still be somewhat hard to listen to for lengths at a time.
Again, my opinion. I've met people who actually prefer Espeak over
Eloquence, though I may never understand why other than one's still being
developed for linux and the other isn't.

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Tony Baechler
Sent: June 1, 2009 2:09 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

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@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

Re: 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@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
-- 
Gena

M0EBP

http://ready2golinux.com 

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Kerry Hoath]

    One of the things that people should remember is all the comercial 
speech generation algorythms have patents on them which prevent 
redistribution.
this is why someone could not just clone eloquence dectalk or whatever.

Mbrola has good voice quality, and is far more human sounding than espeak 
although it is tricky to set up.
Festival isn't bad but also requires speech dispatcher.

Licenses of festival and mbrola are not gpl at least they aren't for the 
voices anyway.

I'm sure Jonathan duddington (sorry if I can't spell your name mate) would 
accept any constructive help in improving how his speech synthesizer sounds, 
especially to make it more human.
Regards, Kerry.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Homuth" <james@the-jdh.com>
To: "'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'" 
<speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 10:21 PM
Subject: RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?


Thanks for that information, as much as it doesn't really answer the
question except to say if you want improvement, use another synth. Is that
to mean we won't be seeing any such improvements with Espeak?

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Willem van der Walt
Sent: June 1, 2009 3:38 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?

There is a way to use mbrola voices with espeak.  It is more human-sounding,
but getting used to espeak standard voice does not take long.
Regards, Willem


On Sun, 31 May 2009, 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. Anyway,
> this was more a rambling/curiosity thing and by no means an attempt at
> criticism as I've not actually gotten it running locally yet, so for all I
know my version of Espeak could already be improved over the demo I heard.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca
> [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Hermann
> Sent: May 31, 2009 3:59 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?
>
> am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs
<w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Tyler,
> >
> > I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on
> > linux is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
> >
> He can look here:
> http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
> I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
> Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is
required.
> Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen
> something in the install script.
> Hermann
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>

--
This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail
legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard.
The full disclaimer details can be found at
http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.

This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.  MailScanner thanks Transtec
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_______________________________________________
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

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tyler Littlefield]

I'd like to help out, making it sound a bit more human, anyway. I'm not sure 
how that's all done, though. It'll take some research, I think.

Thanks,
Tyler Littlefield
Web: tysdomain.com
email: tyler@tysdomain.com
My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kerry Hoath" <kerry@gotss.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 5:59 PM
Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?


>    One of the things that people should remember is all the comercial
> speech generation algorythms have patents on them which prevent
> redistribution.
> this is why someone could not just clone eloquence dectalk or whatever.
>
> Mbrola has good voice quality, and is far more human sounding than espeak
> although it is tricky to set up.
> Festival isn't bad but also requires speech dispatcher.
>
> Licenses of festival and mbrola are not gpl at least they aren't for the
> voices anyway.
>
> I'm sure Jonathan duddington (sorry if I can't spell your name mate) would
> accept any constructive help in improving how his speech synthesizer 
> sounds,
> especially to make it more human.
> Regards, Kerry.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "James Homuth" <james@the-jdh.com>
> To: "'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'"
> <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 10:21 PM
> Subject: RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?
>
>
> Thanks for that information, as much as it doesn't really answer the
> question except to say if you want improvement, use another synth. Is that
> to mean we won't be seeing any such improvements with Espeak?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca 
> [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Willem van der Walt
> Sent: June 1, 2009 3:38 AM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: RE: speakup using different synths with software speech?
>
> There is a way to use mbrola voices with espeak.  It is more 
> human-sounding,
> but getting used to espeak standard voice does not take long.
> Regards, Willem
>
>
> On Sun, 31 May 2009, 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. Anyway,
>> this was more a rambling/curiosity thing and by no means an attempt at
>> criticism as I've not actually gotten it running locally yet, so for all 
>> I
> know my version of Espeak could already be improved over the demo I heard.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca
>> [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
>> On Behalf Of Hermann
>> Sent: May 31, 2009 3:59 PM
>> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
>> Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?
>>
>> am So 31. Mai 2009 um 21:31:02 schrieb William Hubbs
> <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>:
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> > Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> > Tyler,
>> >
>> > I recommend getting used to espeak.  The version of eloquence on
>> > linux is old, buggy, and they are not planning to upgrade it.
>> >
>> He can look here:
>> http://voxin.oralux.net/index.php#main
>> I've bought a rather new version there a few months ago.
>> Works pretty well, but to use it with Speakup Speech-Dispatcher is
> required.
>> Note: Maybe the Emacspeak-server works as well; I remember having seen
>> something in the install script.
>> Hermann
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>>
>
> --
> This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, 
> e-mail
> legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard.
> The full disclaimer details can be found at
> http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.
>
> This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
> MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.  MailScanner thanks Transtec
> Computers for their support.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tony Baechler]

Are they free and packaged for Debian?  My understanding is that you 
have to actually pay for them.  I've spent enough on hardware speech.  
I'm not about to spend money on non-free software speech in addition.  
Also, how do you use them with Speakup and Orca?

Georgina Joyce wrote:
> 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.
>>     

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Georgina Joyce]

Hi

Well if paying for windows works for you then that's alright.  I don't
have the time to write out instructions on how to use cepstral voices
when you just want to complain about espeak and have no intention on
using them because they cost money.

It's your perspectives that are stopping you from using linux.

Gena

On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 02:39 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> Are they free and packaged for Debian?  My understanding is that you 
> have to actually pay for them.  I've spent enough on hardware speech.  
> I'm not about to spend money on non-free software speech in addition.  
> Also, how do you use them with Speakup and Orca?
> 
> Georgina Joyce wrote:
> > 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.
> >>     
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
-- 
Gena

M0EBP

http://ready2golinux.com 

Re: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Michael Whapples]

Firstly orca and hardware synths:
I think some are supported via emacspeak speech servers. I don't know 
how well this works and I believe it is limited to certain synths.

As for free software speech:
I have to say it is a bit of either take what is there (eg. espeak) or 
pay your money for better. Voxin as I remember don't charge a huge 
amount, it was about 5 euros when I bought it, really not much if the 
quality of the speech is so important to you.

The alternative is to try and help work on better speech synthesisers 
and bring something better forward and make that free software.

Personally I feel espeak is far better than anything in the past which 
was opensource and makes software speech on a fully opensource system 
viable.

Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Tony Baechler wrote:
> <div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">Are they 
> free and packaged for Debian?  My understanding is that you have to 
> actually pay for them.  I've spent enough on hardware speech.  I'm not 
> about to spend money on non-free software speech in addition.  Also, 
> how do you use them with Speakup and Orca?
>
> Georgina Joyce wrote:
>> 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.
>
>
>
> </div>

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tony Baechler]

Who said anything about paying for Windows? I got it installed from the 
dealer who built the machine, or with my Dell machines, directly from 
Dell when I got it. I've never had to pay for Windows in my life and I'm 
not sure why I would. I understand the licensing is different for Vista 
and Windows 7, but with Windows 98 and XP, I just have my dealer install 
it for me. That also saves me the trouble of getting sighted help. I'm 
not opposed to spending money on speech, but I've already sunk a fortune 
into hardware synths which have a lot better quality, so the idea of 
buying software speech is foreign to me. Also, I've had my income cut 
twice this year already, so I really can't afford any other expenses 
right now if I had to because the money just isn't there. I know of at 
least one other person on this list who uses Linux because money is an 
issue, and two others who still use DOS, partially for the same reason.

Georgina Joyce wrote:
> Well if paying for windows works for you then that's alright.  I don't
> have the time to write out instructions on how to use cepstral voices
> when you just want to complain about espeak and have no intention on
> using them because they cost money.
>
> It's your perspectives that are stopping you from using linux.
>   

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tyler Littlefield]

Your dealer didn't whip out their magic windows box and give you a free 
copy. You more than likely paid for it, it was just in the cost of the 
computer.


Thanks,
Tyler Littlefield
Web: tysdomain.com
email: tyler@tysdomain.com
My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 5:08 AM
Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?


> Who said anything about paying for Windows? I got it installed from the 
> dealer who built the machine, or with my Dell machines, directly from Dell 
> when I got it. I've never had to pay for Windows in my life and I'm not 
> sure why I would. I understand the licensing is different for Vista and 
> Windows 7, but with Windows 98 and XP, I just have my dealer install it 
> for me. That also saves me the trouble of getting sighted help. I'm not 
> opposed to spending money on speech, but I've already sunk a fortune into 
> hardware synths which have a lot better quality, so the idea of buying 
> software speech is foreign to me. Also, I've had my income cut twice this 
> year already, so I really can't afford any other expenses right now if I 
> had to because the money just isn't there. I know of at least one other 
> person on this list who uses Linux because money is an issue, and two 
> others who still use DOS, partially for the same reason.
>
> Georgina Joyce wrote:
>> Well if paying for windows works for you then that's alright.  I don't
>> have the time to write out instructions on how to use cepstral voices
>> when you just want to complain about espeak and have no intention on
>> using them because they cost money.
>>
>> It's your perspectives that are stopping you from using linux.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tony Baechler]

Hi all,

Apparently my position was unclear.  I'm aware of Voxin and I might look 
at it, although I understand that it requires older libraries and can be 
difficult to set up.  I'm on x86-64 and I don't know if there is a 
64-bit version.  I really don't mind paying for software speech in 
principle.  The simple fact is that I don't like any software speech, 
regardless of what it is.  I've used RealSpeak, Eloquence, ESpeak, 
Festival, AT&T Flextalk, and the software DEC-talk.  I really didn't 
like any of them, although some were tolerable.  They all have a high 
memory and CPU overhead which hardware doesn't.

I wouldn't be opposed to contributing somehow to ESpeak, but I really 
don't have the money (see my previous post) and I'm not a programmer.  
I'm really not sure what I could do.  It seems to work well enough, so 
it isn't like there are bugs to report.  The documentation seems fine, 
at least I had no problem using it with NVDA, Orca or ESpeakup.  I am 
not trying to complain specifically about ESpeak, my comments generally 
apply to all software speech.  I don't think I could get used to the 
ESpeak voice for hours at a time though.

Finally, if I did spend a fairly large amount of money on software, 
whether it's speech or something else, I would want it to be open 
source.  Yes, the GPL does allow companies to charge for software, as 
long as the source is included.  I'll probably never use the source, but 
at least I could recompile it on whatever system I'm using, such as 
Debian Lenny on x86-64.  So, unless I'm mistaken, not only is the 
software itself non-free, but they want money for it besides and it 
still is not and never will be free software.  Surely people here can 
understand why I would not want to use non-free software, regardless of 
how much money is involved.  No, this really isn't about paying for 
Windows, and only somewhat about the money involved.  Yes, call it my 
prospectives or my principles, but I will not use software speech under 
those conditions.  If it comes down to using non-free software speech on 
Linux or using good hardware speech on Windows, since the dealer 
installed Windows for me already and as such it doesn't cost me 
anything, I'll keep using my old Windows 98 until it dies.  I can afford 
to wait a long time for a free alternative for Linux to come along.

One last question on Orca and hardware speech.  I've used the DEC 
Express with Emacspeak before, so I know it works and is supported.  I 
don't know anything about speech servers though.  Would Orca support 
that?  What about the Doubletalk LT, which I think is also supported by 
Emacspeak?

Michael Whapples wrote:
> Firstly orca and hardware synths:
> I think some are supported via emacspeak speech servers. I don't know 
> how well this works and I believe it is limited to certain synths.
>
> As for free software speech:
> I have to say it is a bit of either take what is there (eg. espeak) or 
> pay your money for better. Voxin as I remember don't charge a huge 
> amount, it was about 5 euros when I bought it, really not much if the 
> quality of the speech is so important to you.
>
> The alternative is to try and help work on better speech synthesisers 
> and bring something better forward and make that free software.

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tyler Littlefield]

Your going to have to pay for something. My origenal goal, and still is is 
to move to linux full-time. If that means that I pay for a software synth 
that elimenates the headache of speakup, I'm willing to do so.
As for your cpu overhead, the synths don't add much cpu overhead. I think 
jaws and it's processing actually adds more than the synth does by its self.
Even paying $100 for software synth seems trivial to paying $300+ for a 
hardware synth, which is the cheapest I've seen. Braille N Speak costs like 
$500 referbished from fs, and that's out of date.


Thanks,
Tyler Littlefield
Web: tysdomain.com
email: tyler@tysdomain.com
My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 5:29 AM
Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?


> Hi all,
>
> Apparently my position was unclear.  I'm aware of Voxin and I might look 
> at it, although I understand that it requires older libraries and can be 
> difficult to set up.  I'm on x86-64 and I don't know if there is a 64-bit 
> version.  I really don't mind paying for software speech in principle. 
> The simple fact is that I don't like any software speech, regardless of 
> what it is.  I've used RealSpeak, Eloquence, ESpeak, Festival, AT&T 
> Flextalk, and the software DEC-talk.  I really didn't like any of them, 
> although some were tolerable.  They all have a high memory and CPU 
> overhead which hardware doesn't.
>
> I wouldn't be opposed to contributing somehow to ESpeak, but I really 
> don't have the money (see my previous post) and I'm not a programmer.  I'm 
> really not sure what I could do.  It seems to work well enough, so it 
> isn't like there are bugs to report.  The documentation seems fine, at 
> least I had no problem using it with NVDA, Orca or ESpeakup.  I am not 
> trying to complain specifically about ESpeak, my comments generally apply 
> to all software speech.  I don't think I could get used to the ESpeak 
> voice for hours at a time though.
>
> Finally, if I did spend a fairly large amount of money on software, 
> whether it's speech or something else, I would want it to be open source. 
> Yes, the GPL does allow companies to charge for software, as long as the 
> source is included.  I'll probably never use the source, but at least I 
> could recompile it on whatever system I'm using, such as Debian Lenny on 
> x86-64.  So, unless I'm mistaken, not only is the software itself 
> non-free, but they want money for it besides and it still is not and never 
> will be free software.  Surely people here can understand why I would not 
> want to use non-free software, regardless of how much money is involved. 
> No, this really isn't about paying for Windows, and only somewhat about 
> the money involved.  Yes, call it my prospectives or my principles, but I 
> will not use software speech under those conditions.  If it comes down to 
> using non-free software speech on Linux or using good hardware speech on 
> Windows, since the dealer installed Windows for me already and as such it 
> doesn't cost me anything, I'll keep using my old Windows 98 until it dies. 
> I can afford to wait a long time for a free alternative for Linux to come 
> along.
>
> One last question on Orca and hardware speech.  I've used the DEC Express 
> with Emacspeak before, so I know it works and is supported.  I don't know 
> anything about speech servers though.  Would Orca support that?  What 
> about the Doubletalk LT, which I think is also supported by Emacspeak?
>
> Michael Whapples wrote:
>> Firstly orca and hardware synths:
>> I think some are supported via emacspeak speech servers. I don't know how 
>> well this works and I believe it is limited to certain synths.
>>
>> As for free software speech:
>> I have to say it is a bit of either take what is there (eg. espeak) or 
>> pay your money for better. Voxin as I remember don't charge a huge 
>> amount, it was about 5 euros when I bought it, really not much if the 
>> quality of the speech is so important to you.
>>
>> The alternative is to try and help work on better speech synthesisers and 
>> bring something better forward and make that free software.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Alex Snow]

But you end up paying a lower fee for it since it's an OEM copy that 
the dealer likely bought in bulk.
On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 05:21:01AM 
-0600, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> Your dealer didn't whip out their magic windows box and give you a free 
> copy. You more than likely paid for it, it was just in the cost of the 
> computer.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Tyler Littlefield
> Web: tysdomain.com
> email: tyler@tysdomain.com
> My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@baechler.net>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 5:08 AM
> Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?
> 
> 
> >Who said anything about paying for Windows? I got it installed from the 
> >dealer who built the machine, or with my Dell machines, directly from Dell 
> >when I got it. I've never had to pay for Windows in my life and I'm not 
> >sure why I would. I understand the licensing is different for Vista and 
> >Windows 7, but with Windows 98 and XP, I just have my dealer install it 
> >for me. That also saves me the trouble of getting sighted help. I'm not 
> >opposed to spending money on speech, but I've already sunk a fortune into 
> >hardware synths which have a lot better quality, so the idea of buying 
> >software speech is foreign to me. Also, I've had my income cut twice this 
> >year already, so I really can't afford any other expenses right now if I 
> >had to because the money just isn't there. I know of at least one other 
> >person on this list who uses Linux because money is an issue, and two 
> >others who still use DOS, partially for the same reason.
> >
> >Georgina Joyce wrote:
> >>Well if paying for windows works for you then that's alright.  I don't
> >>have the time to write out instructions on how to use cepstral voices
> >>when you just want to complain about espeak and have no intention on
> >>using them because they cost money.
> >>
> >>It's your perspectives that are stopping you from using linux.
> >>
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >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

-- 
If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot
of different places, just write a Unix operating system.
	-- Linus Torvalds

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Michael Whapples]

Firstly orca and that dectalk express. You should be able to use it (I 
haven't tried it but when I installed emacspeak and had a look whether 
orca would support my apollo through the emacspeak speech server I 
noticed dectalk express in the list, my apollo wasn't). Anyway all I had 
to do was install orca, install emacspeak and emacspeak speech server 
(debian package emacspeak-ss) and then when I started orca preferences 
in the speech server combo box there was an option for emacspeak speech 
server and in the synthesiser combo box I could select dectalk express. 
I hope that works.

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.

As for saying that software speech has a significant CPU overhead, it 
depends on what you use, realspeak is very slow to respond and seems to 
need a lot of processor to work, at the other end of the scale there is 
things like eloquence/viavoice and espeak which I feel are insignificant 
with a reasonable spec computer (I believe orca needs more processor 
power than espeak or viavoice, and when eloquence is used on mobile 
phones for talks and it is very useable it indicates it isn't heavy on 
resources).

Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Tony Baechler wrote:
> <div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">Hi all,
>
> Apparently my position was unclear.  I'm aware of Voxin and I might 
> look at it, although I understand that it requires older libraries and 
> can be difficult to set up.  I'm on x86-64 and I don't know if there 
> is a 64-bit version.  I really don't mind paying for software speech 
> in principle.  The simple fact is that I don't like any software 
> speech, regardless of what it is.  I've used RealSpeak, Eloquence, 
> ESpeak, Festival, AT&T Flextalk, and the software DEC-talk.  I really 
> didn't like any of them, although some were tolerable.  They all have 
> a high memory and CPU overhead which hardware doesn't.
>
> I wouldn't be opposed to contributing somehow to ESpeak, but I really 
> don't have the money (see my previous post) and I'm not a programmer.  
> I'm really not sure what I could do.  It seems to work well enough, so 
> it isn't like there are bugs to report.  The documentation seems fine, 
> at least I had no problem using it with NVDA, Orca or ESpeakup.  I am 
> not trying to complain specifically about ESpeak, my comments 
> generally apply to all software speech.  I don't think I could get 
> used to the ESpeak voice for hours at a time though.
>
> Finally, if I did spend a fairly large amount of money on software, 
> whether it's speech or something else, I would want it to be open 
> source.  Yes, the GPL does allow companies to charge for software, as 
> long as the source is included.  I'll probably never use the source, 
> but at least I could recompile it on whatever system I'm using, such 
> as Debian Lenny on x86-64.  So, unless I'm mistaken, not only is the 
> software itself non-free, but they want money for it besides and it 
> still is not and never will be free software.  Surely people here can 
> understand why I would not want to use non-free software, regardless 
> of how much money is involved.  No, this really isn't about paying for 
> Windows, and only somewhat about the money involved.  Yes, call it my 
> prospectives or my principles, but I will not use software speech 
> under those conditions.  If it comes down to using non-free software 
> speech on Linux or using good hardware speech on Windows, since the 
> dealer installed Windows for me already and as such it doesn't cost me 
> anything, I'll keep using my old Windows 98 until it dies.  I can 
> afford to wait a long time for a free alternative for Linux to come 
> along.
>
> One last question on Orca and hardware speech.  I've used the DEC 
> Express with Emacspeak before, so I know it works and is supported.  I 
> don't know anything about speech servers though.  Would Orca support 
> that?  What about the Doubletalk LT, which I think is also supported 
> by Emacspeak?
>
> Michael Whapples wrote:
>> Firstly orca and hardware synths:
>> I think some are supported via emacspeak speech servers. I don't know 
>> how well this works and I believe it is limited to certain synths.
>>
>> As for free software speech:
>> I have to say it is a bit of either take what is there (eg. espeak) 
>> or pay your money for better. Voxin as I remember don't charge a huge 
>> amount, it was about 5 euros when I bought it, really not much if the 
>> quality of the speech is so important to you.
>>
>> The alternative is to try and help work on better speech synthesisers 
>> and bring something better forward and make that free software.
>
>
>
> </div>

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tony Baechler]

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.

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Kerry Hoath]

lots of message trimmed.
Your dectalk express will work with orca if you set it up with an emacspeak 
speech server and perhaps this will be what you want.

No idea if audacity is accessible under orca, and yes Windows is still 
better for editing audio.
We like what we like and come up with reasons for it afterwoods.
I still like my artic transports and i'm sure I can get them going under 
orca if I so choose.

Problem is Jaws and windows does what _I_ want for the time beeing and I 
just haven't got around to setting up the eeebox with orca.

I do use speakup and espeak, yet to learn how to use ecasound though looks 
complex.
Regards, Kerry.

DECTalk question, was speakup using different synths with software speech?

[al Sten-Clanton]

Tony:

I recently tried using a DEBTalk.  I tried installing Fedora with it.  It
started out fine, but very quickly during the installation there was a long
lag between keystroke and speech.  Indeed, I had a lot more trouble than
usual figuring what choice I was on at various points of the installation.
I went through with the install the last time; I found that the boot-up was
fine, at least to a point, but then the lag kicked in bit-time.

I think this is a problem somebody mentioned on this list in December.  (He
was using Slackware.) My very crude understanding is that it resulted from
changes in the kernel's interaction with serial ports.  Has Debian worked
around or avoided this problem?  I ask because my work with GRML last
weekend suggests that it may have.  (I had another problem with GRML, but
that's off the point.)

The recent speakup fixes seemm almost to have eradicated the problems I was
having with the TripleTalk LT.  Still, I like the speed of the DECTalk
Express, and also one of its voices.

Thanks for any info.

Al 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Tony Baechler
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 7:23 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

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.

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

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[farhan Khan]

Hello, having a mixer would fix a lot of your soundcard problems.
I normally use headphones when I edit anything though.
The soundcards I have in my machine are a soundblaster 24bit, and the 
delta 2496.
The soundblaster is for all the useless sound like screenreaders, 
windows sounds whatever.
The delta does all the music and editing stuff.
On 6/5/2009 6:22 AM, 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.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

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

M0EBP

http://ready2golinux.com 

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Lorenzo Taylor]

I use Audacity here. It's much better than anything I ever used on Windows, 
although it does work there as well. As for cutting off speech, there are a 
couple of things you can do. Firstly, Orca has the ability to silence speech by 
holding down the modifier key, usually the keypad insert key or the caps lock 
key and pressing s. The speech comes back if you press the same combination 
again. Also, if you want the benefits of hardware speech without the cost, try a 
USB sound card such as a Soundblaster mp3. I use this as an example because 
that's the one I have and it works quite well here. Using Pulseaudio, you can 
play the speech, system sounds and whatever else on one device and edit your 
audio using Audacity on the other device. Pulseaudio also helps the volume issue 
where the speech always seems to be quieter than the mp3 you may be playing at 
the same time. You can use the Pulseaudio volume control to adjust the volume of 
every sound on your system. So if the music is too loud, you can easily turn it 
down, or if you need the speech louder, you can turn it up. This is the same 
system you can use to move sound from one device to another. You just use the 
right-click menu on the sound you want to move instead of adjusting the volume.

As for trying Voxin, although the price is quite reasonable, Voxin is just 
another packaged version of a very old speech synthesizer that hasn't been 
updated in about 7 or 8 years and depends on libraries that were somewhat 
outdated even then. So far, the Voxin team has been able to force it to work, 
but they will never be able to guarantee how much longer it will work. The 
libraries that the underlying synthesizer are linked against grow more and more 
obsolete with each passing day, and the source is not available to anyone, so 
even the Voxin package maintainers are unable to rebuild it against newer system 
libraries. Frankly, I'm quite surprised that they have been able to force it to 
work anywhere near this long, and it's only a matter of time before it will stop 
working with no hope of ever speaking again. My suggestion would be to use 
eSpeak and please, please, please report any problems you may have with it, and 
if you are skilled as a programmer, correct what you can. I personally find 
eSpeak much easier to listen to for much longer periods of time than DECtalk, 
Voxin/Eloquence/ViaVoice/IBMTTS/TTSynth/whatever it's called from one minute to 
the next or any hardware synthesizer I ever heard, not to mention the fact that 
it is free as in speech and beer. About the only things that sound better to me 
are the so-called human sounding synthesizers, but they are nonfree and take 
tons and tons of memory. They are also nearly incapable of producing 
intelligible speech at over 200 words per minute, so eSpeak is still the best 
choice if you need something that can be understood at high speeds.

Pacon kaj longan vivon, (Peace and long life),
Lorenzo
-- 
Nia diligenta kolegaro
En laboro paca ne laciĝos,
Ĝis la bela sonĝo de l' homaro
Por eterna ben' efektiviĝos.
--La Espero, himno de Esperanto

Re: DECTalk question, was speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Adam Myrow]

I mentioned the lag problem again recently.  The short and sweet version 
is that anything that tries to access the serial port that the Dectalk is 
on in any way will slow it to a crawl.  For whatever reason, the HAL 
daemon is one such program that probes serial ports.  It is quite poorly 
documented, and I have yet to find out if there is a way to prevent this. 
Since the HAL daemon is pretty much required for any work with Gnome, I 
have avoided it until this bug can be resolved.  I'd bet some distros will 
probe serial ports at install time, looking for a modem or something. 
That would also trigger the bug.

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Chris Brannon]

Lorenzo Taylor wrote:
> I personally find
> eSpeak much easier to listen to for much longer periods of time than DECtalk,
> Voxin/Eloquence/ViaVoice/IBMTTS/TTSynth/whatever it's called from one minute to
> the next or any hardware synthesizer I ever heard, not to mention the fact
> that it is free as in speech and beer.

Hi Lorenzo,
Yes, espeak is definitely my synthesizer of choice these days.  I note
the signature at the bottom of your message.  Have you had much luck with
the Esperanto voice?

-- Chris

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Lorenzo Taylor]

Actually, the Esperanto voice is quite good. I have to slow it down quite a lot 
for now, since I'm rather new to Esperanto, but the voice is quite good.

HTH,
Lorenzo
-- 
Nia diligenta kolegaro
En laboro paca ne laciĝos,
Ĝis la bela sonĝo de l' homaro
Por eterna ben' efektiviĝos.
--La Espero, himno de Esperanto

Mixers

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

Yes, but does Linux support a mixer setup like you're describing?  I 
know it will support a Sound Blaster Audigy, but I'm not familiar with 
the other card.  I have a very good sound card designed for recording 
but it only has Windows drivers.  I'm completely unfamiliar with using a 
mixer and I have no idea if it works in Linux.  I know ALSA supports 
most sound devices and it has its own alsamixer, but I don't know much 
about hardware mixers except that they've been recommended and a basic 
idea of how they work.  Pointers to articles on setting up a nice audio 
system with accessible tools in Linux would be greatly appreciated.  The 
keyword here is accessible because I don't know of any currently 
accessible GUI audio tools for Linux at the moment.

farhan Khan wrote:
> Hello, having a mixer would fix a lot of your soundcard problems.
> I normally use headphones when I edit anything though.
> The soundcards I have in my machine are a soundblaster 24bit, and the 
> delta 2496.
> The soundblaster is for all the useless sound like screenreaders, 
> windows sounds whatever.
> The delta does all the music and editing stuff.

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

Actually, I like sox very much and I use it a lot for basic editing 
tasks.  I also generally prefer the command line.  My first talking 
computer was an Apple II+ with an Echo and a very old version of 
Textalker, so I can relate to poor speech quality.  However, the 
computer industry has progressed far beyond that point, even with 
hardware speech.  There's really no reason to use very low quality 
speech synthesizers anymore.  Note: I am not saying that ESpeak is very 
low quality.  It is better than the Echo, but I'm not sure how much 
better.  Part of the problem is that I am not in the UK and am not used 
to British voices.  It doesn't mispronounce things too badly and it does 
have a fairly low resource overhead.  With that said, I still don't see 
any reason why I should give up my expensive hardware synthesizers and 
why I should be forced into using non-free software speech.

Regarding audio editing, I'm not familiar with soundgrab.  I'll look at 
it.  I do like sox, but it isn't good for very precise editing tasks.  
The command line is great, but when you're dealing with a very small 
amount of audio, such as 0.5 seconds, the command line just doesn't cut 
it.  I recently put together a presentation with music and clips from 
different audio files.  Sox did a great job, but there was a noticable 
lag between files.  I had to create a script with the commands to play 
each clip and it was obvious to me when one ended and the next started.  
With something like Sound Forge, it would've been one smooth 
presentation with no gaps and no lag between clips.  I admit that I'm 
not a sox wizard and there are probably workarounds that I don't know 
about, but it took me much longer to get the command parameters exactly 
right since I couldn't easily cut and paste what I wanted.  It worked 
out well enough in the end though.

Georgina Joyce wrote:
> 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.  
>   

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Willem van der Walt]

Espeak does also have an us english voice.


On Sat, 6 Jun 2009, Tony Baechler wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Actually, I like sox very much and I use it a lot for basic editing tasks.  I
> also generally prefer the command line.  My first talking computer was an
> Apple II+ with an Echo and a very old version of Textalker, so I can relate to
> poor speech quality.  However, the computer industry has progressed far beyond
> that point, even with hardware speech.  There's really no reason to use very
> low quality speech synthesizers anymore.  Note: I am not saying that ESpeak is
> very low quality.  It is better than the Echo, but I'm not sure how much
> better.  Part of the problem is that I am not in the UK and am not used to
> British voices.  It doesn't mispronounce things too badly and it does have a
> fairly low resource overhead.  With that said, I still don't see any reason
> why I should give up my expensive hardware synthesizers and why I should be
> forced into using non-free software speech.
> 
> Regarding audio editing, I'm not familiar with soundgrab.  I'll look at it.  I
> do like sox, but it isn't good for very precise editing tasks.  The command
> line is great, but when you're dealing with a very small amount of audio, such
> as 0.5 seconds, the command line just doesn't cut it.  I recently put together
> a presentation with music and clips from different audio files.  Sox did a
> great job, but there was a noticable lag between files.  I had to create a
> script with the commands to play each clip and it was obvious to me when one
> ended and the next started.  With something like Sound Forge, it would've been
> one smooth presentation with no gaps and no lag between clips.  I admit that
> I'm not a sox wizard and there are probably workarounds that I don't know
> about, but it took me much longer to get the command parameters exactly right
> since I couldn't easily cut and paste what I wanted.  It worked out well
> enough in the end though.
> 
> Georgina Joyce wrote:
> > 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.  
> >   
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

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Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Georgina Joyce]

Hi

I respect that you wish to use a GUI.  I'm not saying you should do this
or that.  I'm just asking that you accept that there are different ways
that different people do things.  By asking how other people do
something like audio editing might broaden your options.  But by stating
that the commandline doesn't cut it, needs to be based upon fact.
Soundgrab is a perl script and probably not supported now.  But it suits
my needs to 4 decimal places of a second is more than enough for me.

head   refers to the player head.  Think in terms of a cassette
               player.  The head has a position in the volume, and may
               be stopped or playing (or browsing).  Playing stops
               automaticly when the head reaches the end of the volume.

        mark   refers to a marker which you can place on the volume
using
               the mark command.  The mark is placed at the position of
               the head at the instant you issue the mark command.  Only
               one mark can exist on the volume at a time.

Once you have a mark on the volume, you use the name command to give
the audio data between the mark and the head position a name.  The
head can be before the mark if that is convenient.  When you have
named all the sections you are interested in saving to files, you use
the export command to do the actual saving.

The browse command lets you automaticly skip through the contents of
the volume (great for channel flippers :).

All commands can be used at any time, whether the volume is being
played or browsed, or is stopped.

Commands may be abbreviated to uniqueness.  Multiple commands
seperated by semicolons may be placed on the same command line.
On Sat, 2009-06-06 at 04:37 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Actually, I like sox very much and I use it a lot for basic editing 
> tasks.  I also generally prefer the command line.  My first talking 
> computer was an Apple II+ with an Echo and a very old version of 
> Textalker, so I can relate to poor speech quality.  However, the 
> computer industry has progressed far beyond that point, even with 
> hardware speech.  There's really no reason to use very low quality 
> speech synthesizers anymore.  Note: I am not saying that ESpeak is very 
> low quality.  It is better than the Echo, but I'm not sure how much 
> better.  Part of the problem is that I am not in the UK and am not used 
> to British voices.  It doesn't mispronounce things too badly and it does 
> have a fairly low resource overhead.  With that said, I still don't see 
> any reason why I should give up my expensive hardware synthesizers and 
> why I should be forced into using non-free software speech.
> 
> Regarding audio editing, I'm not familiar with soundgrab.  I'll look at 
> it.  I do like sox, but it isn't good for very precise editing tasks.  
> The command line is great, but when you're dealing with a very small 
> amount of audio, such as 0.5 seconds, the command line just doesn't cut 
> it.  I recently put together a presentation with music and clips from 
> different audio files.  Sox did a great job, but there was a noticable 
> lag between files.  I had to create a script with the commands to play 
> each clip and it was obvious to me when one ended and the next started.  
> With something like Sound Forge, it would've been one smooth 
> presentation with no gaps and no lag between clips.  I admit that I'm 
> not a sox wizard and there are probably workarounds that I don't know 
> about, but it took me much longer to get the command parameters exactly 
> right since I couldn't easily cut and paste what I wanted.  It worked 
> out well enough in the end though.
> 
> Georgina Joyce wrote:
> > 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.  
> >   
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
-- 
Gena

M0EBP

http://ready2golinux.com 

Re: speakup using different synths with software speech?

[Tony Baechler]

Yes, but it's considered experimental and still has a slight British 
accent. I think a lot of the problem, at least for me, is what I'm used 
to. I did use Espeak for a long time yesterday from the Ubuntu live CD 
trying to get my system to boot and I got to where I didn't mind too 
much. I still would want an alternative for reading books and long 
passages of text, but I could get used to it for daily tasks. Actually, 
I was very impressed with how well it and Orca worked in the Gnome 
Terminal. I think I got my boot problems fixed, and I had no problem 
mounting my LVM volumes and fixing grub. I actually liked it better than 
grml, which locked up twice. Also, I'm finding that the sound card makes 
more difference than I thought. At first, I thought it was just the 
speakers, but the machine I was working on had a new onboard sound 
chipset that I hadn't used before. It was actually not that bad. 
Finally, by default, Speakup and Orca don't use the US English voice, so 
it takes some adjustment to get them to use it. I'm still looking for 
suggestions for a decent sounding voice for reading books, but for now I 
can live with either using Espeak or my hardware synths with the 
Emacspeak speech servers.

Willem van der Walt wrote:
> Espeak does also have an us english voice.
>