Re: [orca-list] Making Orca + Speech Dispatcher + eSpeak Speak Faster

[Jonathan Duddington <jonsd jsd clara co uk>]

On 13 Nov, Kerneels Roos <kerneels gmail com> wrote:

> This is also an issue of speech rate. I set the rate to the full 99 or
> 100 percent in both the orca preferences and in the speech-dispatcher
> config files, but I think the speech can still be faster.

You can adjust eSpeak to make it speak faster, if you can still
understand it.

What voice and language are you using?  For example, if you are using
the "en" voice, you can edit the file:

/usr/share/espeak-data/voices/en/en

using a text editor.  Add this line to the end of the voice file:

fast_test  15  72  110

If you make those numbers smaller, that will increase the speed of the
eSpeak "en" voice at the 100% rate.  These 3 numbers affect different
parts of the speech.  They are:
1.  Pauses
2.  Unvoiced consonants.
3.  Vowels and voiced consonants.

Adjust them for the best results.  Then tell me what you have chosen.   


> The slowness is especially audible when I set orca to voice all
> punctuation which I need to know about when writing source code.

The latest development versions of eSpeak include changes which speed
up the speaking of names of punctuation characters.  They are at:
http://espeak.sf.net/test/latest.html

You'll probably need to copy src/portaudio19.h to replace
src/portaudio.h before compiling.

> What about sound icons? Could that speed things up a bit?

You can try it.  Install the sound icons (package "sound-icons" in
Ubuntu).  You can tell eSpeak to play a sound icon instead of speaking
the name of a punctuation character by editing the configuration file:

/usr/share/espeak-data/config

This contains lines which specify sound-icon files for the bracket
characters.  Currently they are commented out, so remove the // comment
indicator from the start of those lines.