<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 9:10 AM, James Simmons <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nicestep@gmail.com">nicestep@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
I've had some experience with TTS from developing Read Etexts.<br>
Originally, I used speech-dispatcher, which provided a way of writing<br>
apps that used TTS without knowing what TTS engine was being used<br>
underneath. There were a couple of problems with that. Since more<br>
than one engine was supported, the RPM for speech-dispatcher needed to<br>
have them all installed. Second, you needed to configure it.<br>
<br>
Aleksey Lim came up with a gstreamer plugin for espeak that needed no<br>
configuration, and that's what we've been using ever since.<br>
<br>
One problem we have with TTS is doing highlighting. An XO laptop is<br>
not fast enough to make the highlighted word keep up with the word<br>
being spoken. (The gstreamer plugin does callbacks just before it<br>
speaks a word, and these callbacks are used to highlight the words).<br>
A slightly faster computer is enough to resolve the problem. If<br>
Festival needed more horsepower to run than espeak it would make a bad<br>
situation worse.<br>
<br></blockquote><div>Also, listening to festival outputs by Paul, I don't notice a </div><div>real improvement on the robotic voice feeling.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
James Simmons<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Paul Fox <<a href="mailto:pgf@laptop.org">pgf@laptop.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> sridhar wrote:<br>
> > I'm wondering if there's anything we can do to make TTS sound more<br>
> > 'human'. We'd like to be able to use the XOs to teach English<br>
> > literacy, but the espeak voices are very robotic.<br>
> ><br>
> > My understanding is that espeak is optimised for low-power devices<br>
> > (great for XOs) and clear (if robotic) speech. Would it be feasible to<br>
> > switch to something else, like festival?<br>
><br>
> i've run festival as part of my home automation system for many many<br>
> years, including the last 3 or so on an XO-1 (debxo) which acts as my<br>
> current HA server.<br>
><br>
> the first secret is to run it in client/server mode, to avoid the<br>
> server startup latency on every enunciation. but even after that, i<br>
> think the latency will be too high for your application. i just<br>
> tested it: given a moderate english sentence, it took 3 seconds to<br>
> produce output. (i hide this on my system by caching utterances --<br>
> that's more feasible in a menuing system than when teaching literacy.)<br>
> <a href="http://dev.laptop.org/~pgf/junk/festival_out.wav" target="_blank">http://dev.laptop.org/~pgf/junk/festival_out.wav</a> (5 seconds on XO-1)<br>
><br>
> flite is a lower cost version of festival that might be appropriate.<br>
> it seems to reduce the conversion time to about half a second.<br>
> but the quality suffers as well.<br>
> <a href="http://dev.laptop.org/~pgf/junk/flite_out.wav" target="_blank">http://dev.laptop.org/~pgf/junk/flite_out.wav</a> (.5 seconds on XO-1)<br>
><br>
> fyi, current festival server process footprint:<br>
> root 999 0.0 9.4 26668 20004 ? Ss Jun06 10:03 /usr/bin/festival --server /usr/local/etc/nosil.scm<br>
><br>
> i haven't used espeak -- i suspect there are API interfaces that are<br>
> far richer than what i'm doing from the shell commandline. i don't<br>
> know how one might access festival at that level.<br>
><br>
> paul<br>
><br>
> ><br>
> > This is some food for thought:<br>
> > <a href="http://braille.uwo.ca/pipermail/speakup/2008-July/046755.html" target="_blank">http://braille.uwo.ca/pipermail/speakup/2008-July/046755.html</a><br>
> ><br>
> > Sridhar<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> > Sridhar Dhanapalan<br>
> > Technical Manager<br>
> > One Laptop per Child Australia<br>
> > M: <a href="tel:%2B61%20425%20239%20701" value="+61425239701">+61 425 239 701</a><br>
> > E: <a href="mailto:sridhar@laptop.org.au">sridhar@laptop.org.au</a><br>
> > A: G.P.O. Box 731<br>
> > Sydney, NSW 2001<br>
> > W: <a href="http://www.laptop.org.au" target="_blank">www.laptop.org.au</a><br>
> > _______________________________________________<br>
> > Devel mailing list<br>
> > <a href="mailto:Devel@lists.laptop.org">Devel@lists.laptop.org</a><br>
> > <a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel</a><br>
><br>
> =---------------------<br>
> paul fox, <a href="mailto:pgf@laptop.org">pgf@laptop.org</a><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
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