Re: [orca-list] New Linux user, needing higher quality speech

["B.Henry" <burt1iband gmail com>]

I totally agree, and have never used the default espeak voice for very 
long, and have suggested that they change the default.
I like some of the espeak voice/variant combinations, and have made 
voice files for myself and others so that some of these nvda/espeak 
voices can be used easily on Linux as well as creating a few new voices 
which include variant data in there voice files.
Even so I normally use the U.S. English male voice with no variant added 
or other modification as my default voice on Linux.
Actually the phone version of voices usually if not always filters out 
the high end as they assume that phone hardware is not able to reproduce 
the higher frequencies.
I am almost certain I tested  eloquence's phone spin and this was true 
there. If your hearing loss is most notable with higher frequencies 
having more emphasis on the midrange may make it appear to have more 
highs to you?
As for whether people would like espeak more if another voice was chosen 
I can only assume that some would and some would not. Once in a while I 
hear someone say that people would not mind espeak so much if only the 
nvda default voice was used as default in Linux...lol, but again I can 
only guess that would help some people, and hurt others.
I do always try and remind new users of any synth to experiment with 
tone, and anything else available for that synth, e.g. inflection, and 
to try all the available voices and or variants.
I wish those who package espeak would add a couple of female voices at 
least, and a couple o  the klatts in ready to use voice files. To do so 
for all languages could obviously grow the voices sub-folder of 
espeak-data  a lot, but at least do so for English where espeak is best 
in my opinion.
Again I think the bottom line is that voice preference is a matter of 
choice, and in many cases need as some people just can not understand 
one voice and can another, so even if one synth is well maintained and 
much cleaner from a coder/packagers point of view it may be of little 
value to some people who can comfortably use an old patched together 
speech engine.
Those huge old decktalk external hardware synths made  the best synth 
speech in their day by a mile in my opinion, and still are one of the 
easier to understand options.
I've not heard a decktalk box in years, but if my memory is even 50% 
correct they sure sound better than decktalk software speech, to me.

That "to me" is the key of course, and no matter what any of us like I 
hope we can all agree that it is very important to have as many choices 
available to Linux users both for use with speech-dispatcher and self 
voicing aps, not to mention speakup.
          No matter how mujch better Linux may be than the alternatives 
a user who can't understand  available voices, or gets headaches using 
them is not going to stick around to find out.
B.H. Registerd Linux User 521886 On 18/05/15 02:47 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
> Sorry if this is a duplicate post.
>
> I've purposely avoided this discussion because I don't want to get into the
> open source versus proprietary software wars, but apparently my opinion
> seems to differ from the norm, so here it is for what it's worth.
>
> On 5/17/2015 4:05 PM, Luke Yelavich wrote:
> > Its worth noting that NVDA out of the box uses an espeak variant, and I myself don't find that particular 
> > variant palletable at all. I disable all espeak variants on all systems where I use espeak, as the default 
> > voice is more acceptable to my ears.
> >
> > I wonder whether people would think differently of espeak if no variant was used by default with NVDA.
> I have used lots of speech synthesizers over the many years I've been using
> computers, going back to the Echo on the Apple II.  I've also used the
> Doubletalk LT, the DECtalk Express, DECtalk Access32 (not on Linux), ESpeak,
> Eloquence and who knows what others I'm forgetting.  I must say that the
> only one of those I can stand to listen to for many hours at a time is the
> DECtalk Express.  I have yet to find any software speech that I like.  I
> find the software DECtalk to be muffled and hard to understand.  I can
> tolerate ESpeak in short bursts, but it gives me a headache.  I should say
> here that I've used ESpeak primarily in Linux and was not aware that NVDA
> ships a variant.  I like MBrola and could get used to it, but it isn't very
> responsive.  Festival is OK but not great and even more sluggish.  If I must
> use software speech, I use Eloquence for telephones.  Apparently there are
> two versions, normal and telephone with the difference being that telephone
> has better support for higher frequencies.  I don't think that variant is
> available except on Windows.
>
> Call it loyalty, being stubborn or whatever you want, but I'm still using
> the 2.6.32 kernel because it was the last one with Speakup support for
> hardware speech.  I would really like to switch to Orca for daily tasks, but
> I'm still in Windows because Orca apparently doesn't have serial support.
> Similarly, I would like to switch to NVDA as my main screen reader in
> Windows, but it definitely has no serial synthesizer support.  That's really
> weird because it supports serial Braille displays and it looks like it
> wouldn't be hard to write a serial DECtalk driver.  I am not a Python
> programmer though and I wouldn't have any idea what I'm doing.  Even among
> hardware synths, I have yet to find anything with the voice quality and
> clarity of the DECtalk Express.  Note that versions of the firmware after
> 4.2CD are rubbish and not recommended.  I like the Audapter, but they are no
> longer being manufactured.  I can't stand the Accent line.  The Echo was OK
> as far as the sound of the voice, but very robotic.
>
> To close, if there is a way to use my serial synth with NVDA and Orca, I
> would like to know about it.  I would be happy to test any drivers if anyone
> wants to write one.  I have a slight hearing loss, so perhaps that's my
> problem, but I generally have a hard time understanding most software speech.
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