Hi Well here my LTLK works well on this debian lenny system with speakup. I've no interest in using it with orca because I quite like espeak. Because my first experience with a talking computere was with HAL and the Apollo 1 synth and espeak is considerably better than that to my ears. However, I wanted to point out that quite a bit can be done via the console in respect of audio editing. Perhaps soundgrab and sox doesn't attract you but they're a very powerful combination. But I accept that I'm happier on the commandline where as others are better with a GUI. My vinux walk through recieved about 30 cuts and in a couple of places you can hear it because I basically got thed up with it and bored. It's probably not a good example but it was all done on the commandline. Thanks. On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 04:22 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > All, > > There still seems to be misunderstandings on what I'm trying to say. > Again, I really don't mind paying a reasonable amount for software > speech, assuming I can afford it. The problem is that I've never yet > heard software speech that I liked. The other problem is that I don't > like using non-free software but I don't think I could get used to > ESpeak. My favorite voice is the hardware DEC-talk Express. I can use > it to read books, email, work on my other Linux boxes, etc. I can > listen to it for hours without growing tired of it. It has a very fast > speech rate while still being understandable. It doesn't have a muffle > like most software synths, specifically the software DEC-talk. It can > easily be customized to have the exact pitch and inflection I want. > When I bought it, it was around $1200 US and is still worth it, even > though the price dropped since then. I understand that the USB version > isn't as flexible. I've tried many different sets of speakrs for > software speech, but all either have too much bass, a muffle or static. > Probably the best for reading was Realspeak but it was very, very slow. > I've even tried software speech on a high-end stereo system. That did > help, but it still wasn't as good as my old DEC-talk Express. I guess > my next favorite would be the Trippletalk, but it mispronounces things > and has other problems, like stuttering and a fairly small text buffer. > One really great thing about the DEC Express is that if I'm reading and > the power goes out, it stores at least two screens of text in its > buffer, so it will keep reading for a few minutes. > > As I said, I'll look at Voxin. Perhaps it's not as bad as I think. I > know speakers do have a lot to do with it and it's partially what I'm > used to, but what I really want is to just use my hardware > synthesizers. Software speech is enough of an issue for me that I have > put off really exploring Orca. > > Also, one thing not mentioned here is my other reason for not leaving > Windows. That is a lack of GUI audio software. I'm surprised that no > one else has pointed this out, but a really big problem with software > speech and audio production is that you don't want speech in your > recordings. Even if you have multiple sound cards or a good > multichannel card, a good microphone will still pick up software speech, > I know from experience. Even if you use headsets, it's still very > inconvenient when you're doing restoration and editing to hear speech in > your ears at the same time as the sound you're concentrating on. I work > with old time radio shows which have many pops and clicks. It's hard to > hear the disc noise with speech chattering away in my ears. On the > other hand, with hardware speech I can't hear it at all with a headset > on, but at least I don't have to repeat the same half second of sound > multiple times because the speech wouldn't shut up. That's the problem > I'm having now on a Windows machine with only software speech. I'm sure > there's an easy solution, but the volume of all software synths seems to > dominate all other sound, even if the volume is lowered. > > Michael Whapples wrote: > > As for voxin, if you weren't pleased by eloquence, you are unlikely to > > be pleased with voxin as it uses IBM viavoice which sounds the same as > > eloquence (or at least very close, I think the voices are very > > slightly different). > > > > As for contributing to espeak, you could suggest how it could sound > > better, it may not require altering the actual code it may be a matter > > of altering the voice files. I don't mean it in a bad way, but you > > seem to be hard to please with speech output, it may help if we knew > > what makes a voice good to you. > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Gena M0EBP http://ready2golinux.com
