Are we missing spaces in the English TTS package?

[Yuxiang Wang]

Hi all,

I think I found a problem in the English TTS voice guidance. I was guessing, are we missing spaces in the string sent to TTS?

Generally, it is always trying to connect words to pronounce together. For example, whenever it should say "miles", they speak "mi-la-s". My guess is we are missing spaces in the string sent to TTS, because I found the following two sounds are different (click the speaker beneath the textbox to get the sound):

http://translate.google.com/#en/zh-CN/after%2010%20miles%20turn%20left

http://translate.google.com/#en/zh-CN/after10milesturnleft

My Osmand speaks exactly the second link, instead of the first one. Could it be fixed?

Thank you!

-Shawn

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Am Samstag, 1. März 2014 20:23:37 UTC+1 schrieb Yuxiang Wang:

I think I found a problem in the English TTS voice guidance. I was guessing, are we missing spaces in the string sent to TTS?

Generally, it is always trying to connect words to pronounce together. For example, whenever it should say "miles", they speak "mi-la-s". My guess is we are missing spaces in the string sent to TTS, [....]

I can confirm this for German. For example, instead of "B8", it pronounces "Bacht" ("8" is "acht" in German).  Interestingly enough, I experience this with my new Samsung Galaxy S3 mini, but I cannot remember to have observed it on my old HTC Desire.  On both smartphones, I used the same Osmand+ 1.6.5 beta.

Tschö,

Torsten.

[EvanCanton]

I have found that installing the free app "IVONA Text-to-Speech HQ" and the IVONA Kendra English Voice fixes these issues.

[Yuxiang Wang]

Nice! That should give us some hint in how to fix this. Thanks for sharing!

[Franco Bez]

IVONA also fixes the issue for german language.

I suspect that the default Google Text-to-speach engine has some problems.

[Harry van der Wolf]

2014-03-02 8:40 GMT+01:00 Wang Yuxiang <wangyuxi...@gmail.com>:

Yes... Isee ypur point. But the Google maps navigation speaks fine though. Weird.

arry

That's not weird. To me it seems the summum of logic. Google tests and integrates it's own products best. They want you to use google maps with the Google tts engine, not something else from a competitor.
IMHO it's the same issue where Microsoft had so many legal fights about: using the best options from their software (dll's etc.) for their own products.

Harry

[Toby Dickenson]

Ive previously posted a recording of osmand, and other non-google
android apps using the system tts to speak sentences used by osmand.
What we hear is that other apps sound fine, and osmand sounds
different.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/osmand/7gjI0nEHLOQ/YspjxjaVGF0J

These other apps show that the system tts *is* capable of reading
these sentences correctly.

> Google tests and
> integrates it's own products best. They want you to use google maps with the
> Google tts engine, not something else from a competitor.
> IMHO it's the same issue where Microsoft had so many legal fights about:
> using the best options from their software (dll's etc.) for their own
> products.

The android tts having some tweaks specific to google maps would be a
newsworthy story in itself, but it would be a massive story if the
android tts intentionally made competitors to google maps sound bad.

[Harry van der Wolf]

I understand what you mean and you are right that the second voice sounds better.

Note that OsmAnd mixes predefined texts with variables (After, 400/500/700, yards/meters, etcetera). When you let the same string be pronounced by another speech engine, it might sound differently, but in this case you make a nicely formatted sentence.

Rodolpho did (by far) most of the work on the Dutch (and spanish) version, but I also worked on the Dutch one.

We even introduced sometimes two spaces to make it sound better.

You can compare the Dutch (https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/blob/master/voice/nl/ttsconfig.p) with the english (https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/blob/master/voice/en/ttsconfig.p) one.

You can easily experiment with the tts file yourself.

Inside your osmand folder you will find a "voice" folder with the tts language(s) of your choice. Play a little with that file and try out inside Osmand.

In OsmAnd you can find under settings->plugin manager the bottom option "Osmand development".
Switch it on.

Go up one level to the settings main screen and you will now have an option "OsmAnd development".
Inside "Osmand development"  you will have an option "test voice prompts".

If you play with it you might me able to improve it.

If you succeed then please make a pull request for it from the resources repo (https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/tree/master/voice)

Harry

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[Max Erickson]

On Sunday, March 2, 2014 8:04:51 AM UTC-5, Harry van der Wolf wrote:

I understand what you mean and you are right that the second voice sounds better.

Note that OsmAnd mixes predefined texts with variables (After, 400/500/700, yards/meters, etcetera). When you let the same string be pronounced by another speech engine, it might sound differently, but in this case you make a nicely formatted sentence.

Rodolpho did (by far) most of the work on the Dutch (and spanish) version, but I also worked on the Dutch one.

We even introduced sometimes two spaces to make it sound better.

You can compare the Dutch (https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/blob/master/voice/nl/ttsconfig.p) with the english (https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/blob/master/voice/en/ttsconfig.p) one.

 

Using the system en-tts on a Nexus 7, I get a better pronunciation if I remove the trailing spaces, for example:

string('around_1_mile.ogg', 'about 1 mile').
string('miles.ogg', 'miles').

With the spaces, "mile" sounds really off, so that was where I started. Checking now, removing the trailing space from "onto" and several other tests also gives an improved result.

If someone wants to really tweak it I will leave them to it, but if a patch just stripping all the trailing spaces is useful, I can put that together.



Max 

 

[Yuxiang Wang]

Hi Max,

I confirm that this magic trick works on my Samsung Galaxy S2. Thanks!

-Shawn

[Yuxiang Wang]

Hi Max,

Quick thought - should we test a couple more languages (one or two is probably good enough), to see whether we are seeing a consistent improvement by removing the trailing space, before applying the actual change?

PS: I am nowhere near a qualified android developer, just wanted to help - so please point out if some of my ideas are ridiculous :)

-Shawn

On Sunday, March 2, 2014 3:36:39 PM UTC-5, Max Erickson wrote:

[Max Erickson]

On Sunday, March 2, 2014 7:58:47 PM UTC-5, Yuxiang Wang wrote:

Hi Max,

Quick thought - should we test a couple more languages (one or two is probably good enough), to see whether we are seeing a consistent improvement by removing the trailing space, before applying the actual change?

PS: I am nowhere near a qualified android developer, just wanted to help - so please point out if some of my ideas are ridiculous :)

-Shawn

I wouldn't want to mess with languages other than English, I don't know what they should sound like. For English, I don't understand how the pieces all fit together well enough to insist that stripping the spaces is the right thing. For a Nexus 7 with the stock voice it pretty clearly is, but that is a pretty small survey.


Max Erickson

[Harry van der Wolf]

Please don't fiddle with the Dutch (nl) language either. It is fine as it is.

Harry

--

[Yuxiang Wang]

Hi Max,

You are right. What do you think we should do next? Should we directly go ahead and make a pull request (for English only)?

Shawn

[Max Erickson]

I submitted one earlier in the morning. But I think understanding if the changes are appropriate across older versions of Android is more work than deleting the spaces.


Max

[Wang Yuxiang]

Max,

I see. Thank you for the pull request! 

-Shawn

[EvanCanton]

None of these weird pronunciations like "miles" became an issue until Google released the Google text-to-speech app onto the app store.  Those who had stock Android text-to-speech had all of the words pronounced correctly if a bit robotically.
As soon as I installed Google text-to-speech I got all kinds of bizarre pronunciations "MeeLaws" for "Miles", and "Eyes" for "is", etc...  If someone had stock Android TTS before installing Google TTS, they can simply un-install the Google app to revert to stock Android TTS.
But, some of the newer devices come with Google TTS as the stock TTS app, so they only have the option of installing a replacement TTS app like IVONA which sounds way better anyway and actually works.  Adding trailing or proceeding spaces should not change the pronunciation of individual words in any TTS app under an OS, but for some reason it does with Google TTS, which leads me to believe it should only be used by Google Apps and not impose itself on other apps, but it does anyway....

[Yuxiang Wang]

Thank you Evan for the insight. I tried to find the Google product forum for Google TTS, but obviously this doesn't exist yet... Nor is there a "general" forum to post to. I was thinking there should be some way to talk to Google to see whether others face the same issue.

[Yuxiang Wang]

Hi Max,

With the latest update of google TTS today, the voice prompt of my SGS2 in English is fixed. Should we consider withdraw that pull request?

-Shawn

On Monday, March 3, 2014 11:25:26 AM UTC-5, Max Erickson wrote:

[EvanCanton]

I can confirm this, the updated Google TTS is working perfectly now as of today!  :)

[Franco Bez]

Also for the german language the google tts update was an improovement.

The worst glitches are fixed, but still I would not call it perfect.

The pronounciation of some road names is still not good.