Well, how does Voxin sound? Can any of yall send me an mp3 sample?
I'd never heard of it.
Chris.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples aim com>
To: "Chris Gilland: Desktop" <chrisgilland carolina rr com>
Cc: <orca-list gnome org>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 5:21 PM
Subject: Re: [orca-list] IBMTTS and slackware
> Hello,
> Its this sort of problem you describe which puts me off the idea of
> getting IBMTTS. Did you try TTSynth on ubuntu gutsy, I thought it was
> meant to be fine there (unfortunately you would be using an old version
> of ubuntu). I thought also people had got it working by installing the
> compatibility library from a previous version of ubuntu and installing
> that on hardy. Otherwise I would point you at voxin, they say it works
> on ubuntu (and they say they provide that library), but if you have had
> such problems with TTSynth I can understand why you wouldn't want to
> spend more money on this. It would be good if there was a trial version
> so that one could check compatibility before paying out.
>
> As for other synthesisers, I find espeak good, but I feel I am not
> using
> it as fast as I use eloquence. The reasons for some of us liking espeak
> might be (all apply to me):
> Those of us using Linux before espeak came on to the scene had to use
> things like festival or flite, so espeak is quite a step forward for a
> free synth.
> The author of espeak has done a lot to make it even better for use with
> screen readers (some of it being more technical than output quality,
> eg.
> making it a shared library so that a specific speech-dispatcher driver
> can be made, supporting some ssml tags so that it can be control better
> in a stream of text, etc).
> A more personal preference is that espeak originally was developed with
> a British voice, and as I live in England this is nice to me. I know
> that those in the US may not like it so much as I understand it there
> isn't a true US voice in espeak, just one made to sound a bit more
> american.
>
> I agree that neither festival or flite are suitable, either I don't
> like
> the voice (the standard diphone voices) or it is far to unresponsive
> (the arctic multisyn voices in festival in particular, but I would say
> that flite and festival are quite heavy on the system anyway regardless
> of the voice).
>
> Michael Whapples
> On Sun, 2008-06-01 at 15:47 -0400, Chris Gilland: Desktop wrote:
>> Michael, I tried getting TT-Sunth working on Ubuntu. Trust me, I only
>> got
>> it to work once and don't know ho the hell I did it. Trust me dude,
>> it's
>> not worth it. that's why I no longer am a linux user. The speech
>> just
>> isn't bvery good, I hate Festival, and I cannot stand! ESpeak, and
>> frankly,
>> I dono what the people who made it and say it sounds good were
>> smoakin.
>> It's very flangy, and just God aweful in my opinino. I've bought
>> TT-Sunth.
>> Now frankly, if anyone using Hartsy can get this thing speaking, ya
>> know
>> what I'll personally do? I'll send you my copy to try it with,
>> frankly,
>> and
>> if it works for you, I'll then even hell, give you the money on PayPal
>> to
>> buy your own license of the thing and remove my copy, that is,
>> assuming
>> you
>> can get it working on my system. Again, that's the deeal, getting it
>> working on your system's only half of it, you then gotyta get it to
>> work
>> on
>> my Hartsy machine. I even bought Capstral David and can't get the
>> stupid
>> thing to work. I have tried both voices in both gnome speech and
>> speech
>> dispatcher and they just will not show up in the list of synths. O,
>> sure,
>> they install fine, they register fine, but, they won't show up,
>> period.
>> I
>> don't care what libraries I get. Someone said I needed something
>> called
>> IBM-gnome-speech or something, but that it wasn't in the apt
>> repositories.
>> So, where can I go to get it, and is there anyone who can take over my
>> case
>> here and help me with this till we get it running? Again, I'll pay
>> you
>> the
>> $40 for the synth, but, only if we can get it working. I don't have
>> time
>> to
>> deal with this any longer and people saying well, yeah, I will help
>> you,
>> but
>> it's gonna be tough or what not, I know that. This is why I have
>> said, I
>> want help from soneone who darn well knows! they can make it work,
>> regardless what we gotta do. I'm sorry but the only way I'm going
>> back
>> to
>> Linux is if we can get TT-Syunth or Capstral, preferably TT-Synth,
>> Reed,
>> Adult male1 to work. I promise that I will not! bother the list again
>> after
>> it';s working. I just can't use an OS if it has speech I cannot
>> audibly
>> understand. I respect 90 percent of you like ESpeak, and about half
>> of
>> that
>> 90 percent literally swear by it, but, I'm sorry, gag me with a spoon!
>> Unless I can either get donated an old braille display, or can get a
>> good
>> sounding synth like Eloquence, I will not! be going back to any distro
>> of
>> Linux. I'd even be willing to do another distro from Ubuntu, assuming
>> we
>> could get gnome working and get Orca working with TT-Synth.
>> Otherwise, I
>> am
>> sorry, but, I won't have it.
>>
>> Chris.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples aim com>
>> To: <orca-list gnome org>
>> Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 3:36 PM
>> Subject: [orca-list] IBMTTS and slackware
>>
>>
>>
>> > Hello,
>> > I know this has come up before, but I can't remember any actual
>> > final
>> > conclusion.
>> >
>> > Whilst I thought espeak was fast enough, I found I had to use a
>> > windows
>> > machine last week, and it reminded me how I do actually use
>> > eloquence
>> > in
>> > windows faster than I have espeak. This has got me thinking whether
>> > I
>> > should get IBMTTS for linux, but I have a few questions.
>> >
>> > I know that IBMTTS requires an old compatibility library, which I am
>> > unsure is provided in slackware. So how could I go about trying to
>> > get
>> > this library? Does anyone know of a suitable slackware package for
>> > it?
>> > If not how might I go about providing this myself from source (I had
>> > a
>> > look around for the source code I might need, but all libstdc++
>> > seems
>> > to
>> > have numbers such as 6.0.x etc much highrt than what the TTSynth
>> > site
>> > suggests, 2.9.6 or 2.9.5). Could it be possible to use a package
>> > from a
>> > different distribution, eg. I remember back in the days when I used
>> > trplayer, I could use rpm2tgz to convert the realplayer 8 package
>> > into
>> > a
>> > slackware package and it worked fine, but I suspect that for
>> > libstdc++
>> > compatibility libraries things may not be so simple.
>> >
>> > This brings me on to another question, whether to use voxin or
>> > ttsynth?
>> > The ttsynth website says there won't be any support provided, so I
>> > guess
>> > this means if I buy ttsynth and can't get it working then I am on my
>> > own
>> > and may have wasted money on it. Might things be better with voxin,
>> > their website says that voxin includes the libstdc++ compatibility
>> > library (I guess for debian or ubuntu as those are the distros
>> > mentioned).
>> >
>> > Alternatively I am wondering whether it would be best save the money
>> > and
>> > stick with espeak as it is good and works, where as ibmtts sounds
>> > like
>> > I
>> > may hit all sorts of compatibility issues and potentially have no
>> > support from the seller.
>> >
>> > Michael Whapples
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Orca-list mailing list
>> > Orca-list gnome org
>> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
>> > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca
>>
>>
>>
