Hi You didn't mention cepstral voices. On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:08 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > Hi, > > This is very well said. I've felt the same way for a long time which is > why I still use Windows for email and ssh to my Linux machines. I would > prefer to use Linux as my primary OS, but I have a few sticking points > as well. The biggest is the quality of ESpeak, exactly as you say. To > me, it reminds me of an Echo with a British accent. With Speakup, that > isn't a big problem because I have an external Doubletalk LT, a > Trippletalk and a DEC-talk Express. However, unless I'm mistaken, > (someone, please correct me here) there is no way to get Orca to use > hardware speech. I realize that there are better software synths out > there, but either they're just as bad (look at Festival), they're > non-free (Mbrola comes to mind), or they cost money, such as TTSynth. > Until there is a high quality speech synth for Linux that works with > Orca, I will not be completely switching. > > My other sticking point is that there is no equivalent to Sound Forge or > professional audio editing software that's accessible. There are Sox and > Ecasound, but they aren't GUI apps and are difficult to use for long, > comprehensive editing and post-production. I like Wedit, but it has the > same limitations. I know there are GUI audio processors but I read that > they're not accessible. While I'm at it, it would also be nice to find > something for manipulating MIDI files, but I can get by with Timidity > for now. > > James Homuth wrote: > > Somewhat related, what's the likelyhood of Espeak voices getting > > improvements to be more... I'm not sure what the word for it is, other than > > human-sounding? That's been one of my main sticking points for why I'm still > > with Windows on my primary machine; that, plus I've not until now had time > > to test the accessibility of my particular preferred distribution. I did > > hear a demonstration a while back of a version of Espeak, and while I could > > definitely get used to it, I think I'd like it a whole lot better if it > > didn't sound quite as robotic. I'm not saying it should equal eloquence by > > any means, but the demo I heard kind of reminded me of the old Echo synths > > used on the early Apple computers. Good, but could be better, IMHO. > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Gena M0EBP http://ready2golinux.com
