Decktalk hardware is analog. software Speech is not.
Incorrect. DECTalk hardware takes text, converts it to digital speech
signals via software programmed into a chip soldered onto the printed
circuit board, and that digital speech is translated into the analog
sound you hear using another chip on the same board. This is exactly
like what your sound card does. The second-stage chip is called a DAC,
or digital to analog converter. In the case of your hardware speech
synthesizer, the analog wave form is derived from an 8KHz, or possibly
11.025KHZ, mono digital signal and is piped out through a small speaker
connected to the output of the DAC. This is a rather simplified
explanation of the process, but it will suffice here.
recently I was helping someone try to find a dectalk USB, and one of my
associates builds a sort of USB box that uses the most current dectalk
software speech in modules form.
what they told me was that the dettalk 5, which is this software edition
sounds nothing like hardware dectalk, and is quite difficult to understand.
Right. It's 4.6 that sounds exactly like the hardware and produces .wav
files. I've heard 5 once or twice, and they really messed it up bad.
This says nothing of the quality of software speech, but rather speaks
to either the incompetence of the developers the company allowed to
touch their code or the incompetence of the company itself, who felt
like if they just made it different, it would somehow be better.
If no one bothers to write graphical options for hardware speech, not
because it cannot be done, but because they choose the free stuff
instead, that says allot about Linux creativity speaking personally.
No, it says nothing of Linux creativity and everything of the
prohibitive cost of the hardware. It makes no sense at all for a
complete computer on a single board to cost $35, but for a speech
synthesizer to cost $500 or more, especially since it has less hardware
in it than an mp3 player, and that hardware is far older as well. This
is probably why most of us don't even bother with dedicated hardware
speech synthesizers, especially since more can be done in software on
the more powerful hardware that costs far less. Time is better spent
developing for general-purpose hardware and innovating on the software
side than the money that can be made in other ways that would make it
possible to purchase the antiquated hardware that costs too much. This
may also explain why few if any dedicated hardware speech synthesizers
are even made now.
And all of this says absolutely nothing that will help the thread
starter with his original question, how to convert text via software to
an mp3 file. I answered that question to the best of my ability based on
what I found, although I don't know what is causing some people to see
errors instead of hearing speech. The solution to that problem is still
escaping me unfortunately.
~Kyle
_______________________________________________
Blinux-list mailing list
Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list