Best TTS for Vinux

[Bill Cox]

Sorry for using this forum to post a personal milestone: I'm listening
my second book now at 600 words per minute. I suspect that few other
skills will be as important for me as my central vision fails, and I
can't tell you how good it makes me feel that I can do this at my age
(I'm 45). I'd post elsewhere, but frankly, there are few communities
that can fathom what that means.

Anyway, I like espeak, but I can't understand it over about 500 words
per minute, and at that speed, it's pretty garbled. So far as I can
tell, Voxin's TTS (based on the old Via Voice, or Eloquence), is far
superior for understanding at high speed. While it's not open-source,
Voxin is selling it at a cost that is true charity (about $5-$10),
given that they have to keep porting the software. Do other Vinux
users agree that Voxin is the best available, on any platform? If so,
should we try harder to automate the installation? I'm thinking, for
example, of an icon on the desktop that launches the browser to the
appropriate web site.

[Tony Sales]

Hi Bill, it seems that most people agree that voxin is superior to
espeak espeially at high speed. I haven'y bought a copy myself yet but
I will - obviously I cannot provide it to anyone, but if I know how to
install it etc I may be able to make the proces alittle easier. If you
could tell me exactly what I have to do in the order I have to do it
then I will have a play with it.

drbongo

--

Dig that crazy beat on the drums: <http://vinux.org.uk>  The best is
getting better!

[Bill Cox]

Hi, Tony.

I did the following just now to install voxin:

- Went to http://voxin.oralux.net/. It's useful to read this page.
- Followed link to http://voxin.oralux.net/get.php. Followed
purchasing instructions.
- After completing the purchase (it cost me $5.78 given the current
dollar/euro exchange rate):
- Checked my e-mail. There was an e-mail with a download link.
- My download file was called voxin-enu-0.25.tgz. I extracted it with:
tar -xvzf voxin-enu-0.25.tgz
- I cd'd into the voxin-0.25/voxin-enu-0.25 directory, and executed
the voxin inst
aller:
voxin-installer.sh
- I just follow the instructions to complete the install.

So far as I know, this just works in all flavors of Vinux. I've also
been able to get voxin working with espeakup and emacspeak, but that
takes a bit more effort. I'm not sure how much automation can be done
here. Perhaps Firefox could install with a bookmark to the Voxin home
page? Maybe we could start a Vinux wiki, and add a page for Voxin?

Bill

[Bill Cox]

Also, I've got a custom version of the 'say' program for Voxin that I
use to create audio-books. Basically, I added the ability to control
the speed and to specify input and output files. I read the EULA
carefully, and this is clearly something I'm allowed to do for myself,
but I'm not allowed to redistribute the audio files I create. I find
it very useful. I've attached the files, which are derivations of
original files released under LGPL, though the original authors are
not listed.

Bill

[Labrador]

Hi,

just also remember there are people like me whichfor English sin't those
motherlanguage, and for that reason the tempo of speech may not be too fast
but as normal as "human talking", of course with the individual feature to
increas speed and other params.
Another important thing is maybe that some of us is more braille user than
speech user, so using espeak or another speech app is a learning process in
some cases.

Greetings,

Labrador

--
Dig that crazy beat on the drums: VINUX !!! The best is getting better!
----------------------------------<http://vinux.org.uk>------------------

[David Ring]

Hello everyone,

The IBM Text-To-Speech (TTS) is also available in many other languages.

Chinese, Simplified
Chinese, Traditional
English, UK
English, US
Finnish
French
French, Canadian
German
Italian
Japanese
Portuguese, Brazilian
Spanish, Castilian
Spanish, Mexican

What I was told a while ago that it WAS possible to purchase other languages and that if one wished to do so, they were advised to contact Gilles Casse at <con...@oralux.org>, to ask if the language they wished were available as a special order.

I believe the language that was asked about was Swedish. 

I have only used the English, US module - but using voice number five, I have found that I can read e books at very fast rates.  I can listen to the books faster than I could with my eyes and because the speech is so fast, I listen more carefully which makes me remember things better.

I also use the very fast voice - number five - for reading screens - to see if I can find error messages - they are often identified by " ERROR " on the screen, and if I hear it, I listen to see if it is an important error or just a regular error.

However when closely reading things, I use a slow voice and I even slow it down.  I do this with error messages when I cannot get a program to work.  I also do this when reading very fast with the fast voice number five, when I didn't understand something that I thought sounded important.  When reading a book of 500 pages, not every word is important, but sometimes the author reveals a clue or an important fact in only a very few words.   I have to go back to make sure that I heard what it really said - and surprisingly it usually was what I did hear the first time.

To non native speakers of English, I would get the module that is most like the voice of the teacher you loved.  If you had teachers who used the United Kingdom pronunciation, buy that module.  If your teacher was more like someone from the United States, then buy this module.

Unfortunately they don't have as many and beautiful dialects as espeak  or festival. 

I find in speekup if I change from default voice which is number 1, and choose US English which is number 7, I can understand the synthezed voice much better.  But it is not as clear as Voxin.

Voxin IBM Text To Speech is much much much clearer and sounds nearer to the voice of a real person.  Or more accurately starts to sound not like a machine.

Osvaldo, you might like to try out the UK English and the French modules - I'm sure you would love them.  If you have any problem doing this contact me, because I know you spend much time helping others, as I do also.

Best wishes,

DR

David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA
SOWP, VWOA, OOTC, ARRL-LM

Chat Skype: djringjr MSN: djri...@msn.com AIM: N1EA icq: 27380609

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[RJC]

Yep, I agree. Viavoice / Voxin is the best speech out there, especially for
high speed listening.

My issue, and the one that has been really holding me back from linux (ok,
aside from another box I can dedicate at home) is the speech dispatcher
issue where the speech doesn't interrupt fast enough. I believe its been
talked about recently on the orca list.

Does the latest version of vinux gui use speech dispatcher or gnome speech?
If it uses speech dispatcher, then is there a way of installing gnome speech
and getting it to work with voxin? This for me has been the most difficult
part of the voxin install. when I built it for Ubuntu 8.10, I had to
download the source and compile it and be sure that it knew about my voxin
install. I cannot remember any details of this process, but it took many
tries.

Just my two cents.
-- Rich

[Tony Sales]

Hi RJC, Vinux 2.0 (GUI) does use speech-dispatcher by default but you
can easily switch to gnome speech just by opening Orca preferences and
choosing it in the combo box, then there shouldn't be any issues,
other than it is not quite as responsive as speech-dispatcher.

drbongo

[RJC]

Thanx lots.