Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Garrett Klein]

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Hash: SHA512

Hello all,

	Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module in the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. Some of these may not be correctable, as I'm used to Eloquence on the other operating system.

1. Too slow--I want to be able to crank this baby up to at least 600 wpm.
2. Volume level--The voice is incredibly soft compared to other sounds on the system, so that when I play music with the synth at a decent volume, I get blasted.
3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various things it chokes on, chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it choke on wikipedia search pages. I even wrote a little shell script to restart speech-dispatcher (which, annoyingly enough, I can't just kill with 'killall -9 speech-dispatch,' nor can I 'pidof speech-dispatch' to even find out its pid).
4. Can there be more of a noticable inflection on exclamation points?

Hope this stuff helps the developer of the module.

Garrett
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Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Hynek Hanke]

> Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module
> in the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. 

First of all, thanks for the feedback! Please send this report to
speechd@lists.freebsoft.org . That is the correct address. I'm not sure
the author of the module is reading this list (but of course he is
reading speechd@). You do not have to be subscribed to post and receive
replies.

> 3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various things it chokes on,
> chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it choke on wikipedia search pages.
> I even wrote a little shell script to restart speech-dispatcher 

Could be either a problem of the module or of the synthesizer. Generally
in such situations it helps the developers very much if you can provide
examples of input that cause the crash.

> (which, annoyingly enough, I can't just kill with 'killall -9 speech-dispatch,'
>  nor can I 'pidof speech-dispatch' to even find out its pid).

This should work. If it is not, it is a bug. But I think you
are providing wrong name of the binary
	killall -9 speech-dispatcher
	pidof speech-dispatcher
both are ok on my machine. If it doesn't work, please let me know. I'll
try to see what is wrong and fix it.

With Regards,
Hynek Hanke

Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Gary Cramblitt]

On Monday 05 June 2006 14:47, Garrett Klein wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> 	Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module in
> the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. Some of these may not be correctable, as
> I'm used to Eloquence on the other operating system.
>
> 1. Too slow--I want to be able to crank this baby up to at least 600 wpm.
> 2. Volume level--The voice is incredibly soft compared to other sounds on
> the system, so that when I play music with the synth at a decent volume, I
> get blasted. 3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various
> things it chokes on, chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it
> choke on wikipedia search pages. I even wrote a little shell script to
> restart speech-dispatcher (which, annoyingly enough, I can't just kill with
> 'killall -9 speech-dispatch,' nor can I 'pidof speech-dispatch' to even
> find out its pid). 4. Can there be more of a noticable inflection on
> exclamation points?
>
> Hope this stuff helps the developer of the module.

Thanks for feedback.

1.  The talking rate currently defaults to the default rate of the IBMTTS 
synth.   You can adjust speed in three ways.  a) Get your application to 
increase speed by sending SSIP SET RATE command.  b) Uncomment and adjust 
DefaultRate line in speechd.conf file.  c) Uncomment the 
IbmttsVoiceParameters lines in the ibmtts.conf file and increase the numbers 
in the Speed column.

2.  With the DefaultVolume parameter in speechd.conf defaulting to 100, the 
ibmtts module is already setting the volume to maximum, according to the eci 
technical docs.  I don't know if it can go louder.  Will investigate.

3.  Will investigate grave accent crashing.  Are there other inputs you can 
give us to investigate?  What voice (both Speech Dispatcher and IBM TTS) are 
you using when it crashes?

4.  Inflection is up to the synth.  You might be able to increase inflection 
by changing Pitch Flc in the aforementioned IbmttsVoiceParameters lines.

-- 
Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)

Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Justin Ekis]

Hi Garrett,

Where did you find the ibmtts runtime for download? I know it's included 
in the ttsynth software, but there doesn't seem to be a way to purchase 
it on their web site as of yet.
I'm really looking forward to trying this out. That demo file sounds 
just like eloquence. To me nothing has ever sounded quite as good as 
that synth.

You mentioned wanting more noticeable inflection. Have you tried any of 
the other software speech options, and would you say the inflection is 
better than some of them? Is it not as good as eloquence? That's the top 
thing that sets eloquence above all software speech I've tried on linux 
and I'd be disappointed if that wasn't the case here.

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 02:47:16PM -0400, Garrett Klein wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA512

> Hello all,

> 	Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module in the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. Some of these may not be correctable, as I'm used to Eloquence on the other operating system.

> 1. Too slow--I want to be able to crank this baby up to at least 600 wpm.
> 2. Volume level--The voice is incredibly soft compared to other sounds on the system, so that when I play music with the synth at a decent volume, I get blasted.
> 3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various things it chokes on, chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it choke on wikipedia search pages. I even wrote a little shell script to restart speech-dispatcher (which, annoyingly enough, I can't just kill with 'killall -9 speech-dispatch,' nor can I 'pidof speech-dispatch' to even find out its pid).
> 4. Can there be more of a noticable inflection on exclamation points?

> Hope this stuff helps the developer of the module.

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

Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Garrett Klein]

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Justin,

	I must confess that I sort of got my hands on a prerelease copy of ttsynth. The main issue I'm having with inflection is that it doesn't always inflect exclamation points right, but it's lightyears ahead of even espeak (though I never really liked that voice)
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Inflection in speech synthesis (was: Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher)

[Hynek Hanke]

Justin Ekis píše v Po 05. 06. 2006 v 18:52 -0400:
> You mentioned wanting more noticeable inflection. Have you tried any of 
> the other software speech options, and would you say the inflection is 
> better than some of them? Is it not as good as eloquence? That's the top 
> thing that sets eloquence above all software speech I've tried on linux 
> and I'd be disappointed if that wasn't the case here.

Hi Justin and others,

I'm interested if you or others tried Festival. Do you know it is
possible to adjust the inflection span with
	(set-pitch-range value)
in /etc/festival.conf (will soon be adjustable through Speech Dispatcher
too)? Bellow is included a description of how to test it easily.

Also I want to be sure nobody mistakes Festival voices with Flite
voices. Even though they have the same name for using the same bases
for their diphone databases, they are not the same voices at all.

If you are still not satisfied with the inflection, could you please
provide feedback on what is wrong with it (if possible, including the
voice name) ?

This is VERY important, because Festival is currently the most advanced
Free Software synthesis tool to my knowledge. Most parts of the
synthesis process, the databases etc. are not fixed by the author, but
they are written as modules in Lisp and they can be fixed/rewritten as
well as new modules can be added by third sides. Everything is
configurable. So if people are interested in Free Software and the
principles behind GNU, Linux and its technical features, the right way
now to get a better synthesizer is to support Festival by providing a
list of requested features and bug-fixes. (Another way would be
to create a whole new framework for software synthesis, similar to
Festival, but that would be a big project compared to this.)

I do not claim I currently know anyone who has time and resources to
work on it, but if a wish-list is created, someone might be found.

Thank you,
Hynek Hanke

How to test inflection with Festival
====================================

A way to test it is to run the festival binary
	$ festival
and type in
> (SayText "This is the default inflection")
> (set-pitch-range 200)
> (SayText "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, what is new? Inflection is
bigger!")

Once you are at it, you can also test the available voices. You get
the list of available voices by

> (voice-list)

and then you can switch them by issuing a command composed by the
string "(voice_", the name of the voice and the closing parenthesis.

> (voice_kal_diphone)
> (SayText "something")

or

> (voice_ked_diphone)
> (SayText "something")

and so on. For more commands, see Festival documentation. Maybe there
are more settings that can influence inflection in a significant way,
I'm CCing a Festival developer from Brailcom who can maybe say more
about them.

Re: Inflection in speech synthesis (was: Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher)

[Willem van der Walt]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 4166 bytes --]

Espeak has the potential to be the gnu software speech engine.
Festival is big and unresponsive.
The voice inflection in IBM's Viavoice can be changed with an in-line 
command.
I cannot recall what it is right now.
HTH, Willem


On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Hynek Hanke wrote:

> Justin Ekis pí?e v Po 05. 06. 2006 v 18:52 -0400:
>> You mentioned wanting more noticeable inflection. Have you tried any of
>> the other software speech options, and would you say the inflection is
>> better than some of them? Is it not as good as eloquence? That's the top
>> thing that sets eloquence above all software speech I've tried on linux
>> and I'd be disappointed if that wasn't the case here.
>
> Hi Justin and others,
>
> I'm interested if you or others tried Festival. Do you know it is
> possible to adjust the inflection span with
> 	(set-pitch-range value)
> in /etc/festival.conf (will soon be adjustable through Speech Dispatcher
> too)? Bellow is included a description of how to test it easily.
>
> Also I want to be sure nobody mistakes Festival voices with Flite
> voices. Even though they have the same name for using the same bases
> for their diphone databases, they are not the same voices at all.
>
> If you are still not satisfied with the inflection, could you please
> provide feedback on what is wrong with it (if possible, including the
> voice name) ?
>
> This is VERY important, because Festival is currently the most advanced
> Free Software synthesis tool to my knowledge. Most parts of the
> synthesis process, the databases etc. are not fixed by the author, but
> they are written as modules in Lisp and they can be fixed/rewritten as
> well as new modules can be added by third sides. Everything is
> configurable. So if people are interested in Free Software and the
> principles behind GNU, Linux and its technical features, the right way
> now to get a better synthesizer is to support Festival by providing a
> list of requested features and bug-fixes. (Another way would be
> to create a whole new framework for software synthesis, similar to
> Festival, but that would be a big project compared to this.)
>
> I do not claim I currently know anyone who has time and resources to
> work on it, but if a wish-list is created, someone might be found.
>
> Thank you,
> Hynek Hanke
>
> How to test inflection with Festival
> ====================================
>
> A way to test it is to run the festival binary
> 	$ festival
> and type in
>> (SayText "This is the default inflection")
>> (set-pitch-range 200)
>> (SayText "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, what is new? Inflection is
> bigger!")
>
> Once you are at it, you can also test the available voices. You get
> the list of available voices by
>
>> (voice-list)
>
> and then you can switch them by issuing a command composed by the
> string "(voice_", the name of the voice and the closing parenthesis.
>
>> (voice_kal_diphone)
>> (SayText "something")
>
> or
>
>> (voice_ked_diphone)
>> (SayText "something")
>
> and so on. For more commands, see Festival documentation. Maybe there
> are more settings that can influence inflection in a significant way,
> I'm CCing a Festival developer from Brailcom who can maybe say more
> about them.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
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Re: Inflection in speech synthesis (was: Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher)

[Hynek Hanke]

Willem van der Walt píše v Út 06. 06. 2006 v 15:08 +0200:
> Espeak has the potential to be the gnu software speech engine.

Frankly, it does not. I strongly hope this is no offence to anyone!
eSpeak is very good as a lightweight English synthesizer and perhaps
some other languages will be developed too. It also is an incredible
step forward in combining diphone and formant synthesis. However, it has
no extensibility mechanism, and it is lacking many other essential
functionality to be THE gnu software speech synthesis framework.

I suspect you do not understand Festival if you are comparing
Festival and Espeak. Maybe you are comparing just some your
choice of the voices, not the whole framework.

But don't get me mistaken. I'm happy eSpeak exists and I'm working with
Jonathan on the necessary improvements so that we can get a better
support in Speech Dispatcher and implement some new capabilities.

> Festival is big and unresponsive.

What exactly do you mean by big?

1) It is difficult to install.

In such case, please contact your distribution authors about it. In
Debian, it is currently as easy as any other package.

2) It takes too much space on the harddrive.

IMHO completely irrelevant with today state of hardware.

3) Something other?

Please explain.

What do you mean by unresponsive?

1) Echoing letters is slow.

Please use new versions of speechd-up and speech-dispatcher. Letters
are being cached now and have nothing to do with Festival.

2) Reading sentences, especially longer ones is slow.

Part of it is the time the synthesis takes, including SSML parsing
etc. This is definitely a thing that should be put on the list
and be worked on in the future. At the same time, computers are
quickly getting faster, so this will be less of an issue. The argument
would have to be stronger to convince the design of Festival is broken
in principle.

Another part of it (like 50% of the total time to get audio out of
speakers) is a bug in the communication mechanism proposed by the
Festival authors and used in Dispatcher. We already identified the issue
and are working on it.

With regards,
Hynek Hanke

Re: Inflection in speech synthesis

[Justin Ekis]

I'm sending this again from my subscribed address this time. I think 
messages from non-subscribed addresses get blocked. Sorry if this is a 
duplicate.

On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 02:34:28PM +0200, Hynek Hanke wrote:
> I'm interested if you or others tried Festival. Do you know it is
> possible to adjust the inflection span with
> 	(set-pitch-range value)
> in /etc/festival.conf (will soon be adjustable through Speech Dispatcher
> too)? Bellow is included a description of how to test it easily.

Hello Hynek,
I have /etc/festival.scm but not festival.conf. Is that the file to use?
Unfortunately the example you sent isn't working here, I may be doing 
something wrong though.

> (set-pitch-range 200)
SIOD ERROR: unbound variable : set-pitch-range

Where can I find clear documentation on festival? I've installed the 
festival-doc package in debian and looked through the manual which 
starts at /usr/share/doc/festival/html/festival_toc.html.
It seems very complicated and I get the idea I'll have to learn the 
scheme language just to customize my tts. That's not very appealing.
Any help or advice is appreciated.

By the way, any idea when festival 2.0 will be out? It's coming up on 
two years since 1.95 beta was released and nothing new. There's not even 
an experimental debian package for it that I can find.

Justin

Re: Inflection in speech synthesis

[Hynek Hanke]

Justin Ekis writes 06. 06. 2006 v 22:21 -0400: 
> I have /etc/festival.scm but not festival.conf. Is that the file to use?

Yes, sorry for the mistake. /etc/festival.scm is correct.

> Unfortunately the example you sent isn't working here, I may be doing 
> something wrong though.
> > (set-pitch-range 200)
> SIOD ERROR: unbound variable : set-pitch-range

I forgot to notice this function comes from the festival-freebsoft-utils
extension package. In Debian, this is the package name, otherwise you
can get it here:
http://www.freebsoft.org/festival-freebsoft-utils

It is a package providing some of the functionality needed for Speech
Dispatcher through the Festival extensions mechanism. It is also a
package providing a consistent and hopefully friendlier interface to
festival and some of its parameter settings. I've found HTML
documentation is not available from the project pages, so I've
temporarily placed it on
	http://www.freebsoft.org/~hanke/festival-freebsoft-utils/
until we fix it (which should happen in a few days).

> Where can I find clear documentation on festival? I've installed the 
> festival-doc package in debian and looked through the manual which 
> starts at /usr/share/doc/festival/html/festival_toc.html.

Yes, user documentation is also one of the things which is needed.

> It seems very complicated and I get the idea I'll have to learn the 
> scheme language just to customize my tts. That's not very appealing.

For simple options, like (set-pitch-range 200), Scheme offers a simple
syntax. But the great advantage of having the configuration file in
syntax of a scriptable language is that you can do more complicated
things if you like, load your own extensions etc. You are not limited by
a set of linear configuration options provided by the author.

Also, the KDE and Ubuntu developers expressed their wish to work on
a configuration tool for accessibility tools, including Festival.

> By the way, any idea when festival 2.0 will be out? It's coming up on 
> two years since 1.95 beta was released and nothing new. There's not even 
> an experimental debian package for it that I can find.

I don't know. But please be aware that much of the developement on Festival
is happening through independent extension packages like festival-freebsoft-utils,
festival-czech, festival-italian etc.

With regards,
Hynek Hanke

Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Gary Cramblitt]

On Monday 05 June 2006 14:47, Garrett Klein wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> 	Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module in
> the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. Some of these may not be correctable, as
> I'm used to Eloquence on the other operating system.
>
> 3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various 
> things it chokes on, chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it
> choke on wikipedia search pages.

I am unable to duplicate this crash.  I tried À and  à.  I suspect that 
problem is specific to the IBMTTS voice that is being used.  Which voice are 
you using?  Unfortunately, I have only English voice available to me.

-- 
Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)

Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Janina Sajka]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain; charset=mutt-utf-8, Size: 1738 bytes --]

Gary Cramblitt writes:
> On Monday 05 June 2006 14:47, Garrett Klein wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > 	Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module in
> > the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. Some of these may not be correctable, as
> > I'm used to Eloquence on the other operating system.
> >
> > 3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various 
> > things it chokes on, chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it
> > choke on wikipedia search pages.

It would be helpful to document as many of these as we can. I do forward
them to IBM as we come across them, so please feel free to send to me.

Some other chokers:

caesure
vim-common-6.4.007-4

The engine also has the annoying "feature" of expanding acronyms, quite
inappropriately, imho. My favorite malapropism for the numerous ones on
ibmtts is how it says cd, as though I were measuring foot candles!
<grin>


Janina

> 
> I am unable to duplicate this crash.  I tried À and  à.  I suspect that 
> problem is specific to the IBMTTS voice that is being used.  Which voice are 
> you using?  Unfortunately, I have only English voice available to me.
> 
> -- 
> Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)
> 
> _______________________________________________
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Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Garrett Klein]

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Janina,

	My favorite is how it says BSD as "Bahamanian Dollars. Oh and dl as deciliters.

Garrett
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Re: Some issues with the ibmtts output module of speech-dispatcher

[Garrett Klein]

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Gary,

	I'm using the English voice, AKA Reed in Eloquence terminology. I've also noticed it crashes with lots of dashes (such as how text browsers render the <hr> tag), and sometimes with greater-than symbols and tildes.

	And another thing, for those commenting on inflection, it's only with exclamation points that I'm really concerned, the other stuff is okay. Can I change the speed conversions in the ibmtts module itself so I can read faster with Speakup?

Garrett

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 02:22:55PM -0400, Gary Cramblitt wrote:
> On Monday 05 June 2006 14:47, Garrett Klein wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > 	Here are some things I've noted while using the ibmtts output module in
> > the latest cvs speech-dispatcher. Some of these may not be correctable, as
> > I'm used to Eloquence on the other operating system.
> >
> > 3. Most annoyingly, the module crashes. There are various 
> > things it chokes on, chiefly the grave accent symbol. I've also seen it
> > choke on wikipedia search pages.
> 
> I am unable to duplicate this crash.  I tried À and  à.  I suspect that 
> problem is specific to the IBMTTS voice that is being used.  Which voice are 
> you using?  Unfortunately, I have only English voice available to me.
> 
> -- 
> Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)
> 
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