[DECtalk] Some DECtalk history and what I think we can and can't reasonably do

Wed Aug 3 13:43:56 EDT 2011

agreed

On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Alex H. <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com> wrote:

> **
> I, too, hope that HLsyn eventually will be a viable option and we could use
> the old method or HLsyn if we wanted, maybe for reading long texts and so
> on. It's a great idea and theory but just isn't mature enough at this point.
>
> Alex
>
>
>
>
> On 8/3/2011 1:13 PM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
>
> There's always two sides to a coin, if DECtalk hadn't been purchased it
> would have died. And since there was no money from anyone to work on
> handicapped applications, we had to do what our customers want it or go
> home. I recognize that the HLsyn work did not yield the hoped-for results
> and perhaps someday it can with what we learned in our failures. But it was
> a decision based on the best knowledge we had at the time and in fact also
> with Dennis Klatt's work. The problems that occurred with the HL sin version
> aren't of any interest to me because the version put out was in early one
> and it's not the right time to pursue trying to perfect HLsyn. S
> On all I can do is my best.
>    As to the person that mentioned the idea of putting meaning into the
> text. DECtalk actually has the ability to do some marketing and adjustment
> to train achieve that by hand. Automating the system to do that is deal
> beyond our knowledge and capability. Understanding what is being conveyed is
> extremely extremely difficult for a computer. A simple example;"You did
> that." Depending on which word you emphasize most there are three different
> ways of saying this very simple sentence with dramatically different
> meanings.
>
>
>  Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Alex H. <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, to us,, we never really heard later versions of DT, only the classics
> from the 90's, so forgive us if we compare the new attempts to prior
> versions - it's not like we have a huge library of source code to just
> browse at will and endless samples of every version.... so... yeah.
>
> Wanna know what's been wrong with the samples and attempts posted to this
> list a few months ago for the sapi dectalk? I'll tell you.
>
> The voices were clipping and squawking, and all the voices sounded like
> they had a speech problem. Perfect Paul wasn't perfect as most of us have
> heard before. The voices themselves sound not like DECTalk at all, they also
> drop out in volume, just like a human cuz it's using HLsyn to make it sound
> more natural.
> I've heard DT 4.2cd, 4.3, 4.4, 4.61, 4.62 and 4.64. But since you've
> pointed out before that version numbers don't matter to speak, is this even
> important anyway or are we just listening to the same code with minor tweaks
> to get the various versions we know?
>
> Disable HLsyn in the new product, and it'll suck less. I like forment based
> synths, not ones that try and sound human, because I and others are used to
> classic forment non-HLsyn versions of DECTalk. True that HLsyn is still
> formant but it's trying to sound real and have human articulation, and
> knowing that I can understand why this version sounds different. It's just
> not what we're used to, that's all. Some Joe Blow off the street who has
> never heard synthesized speech can't understand Eloquence from DECTalk from
> Espeak anyways, so this point of understanding speech is a moot one.  They'd
> be better off using Cepstral or some human-sampled synths and wasting their
> hard drive space. This is being targeted at a relatively small group of
> people who have used DECTalk before and like it, so i think we're safe
> there. I'd consider giving HLsyn another shot if it was completed. But as
> always, corporate America screws everyone over in the end, and that was the
> case with Dectalk. So much so, that Fonix wanted to make FonixTalk and
> specificly try and make it sound human. The result sucks.
>
>
> Alex
> On 8/3/2011 11:17 AM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
>
>    First of all let me make you aware that I use DragonDictate, as I can't
> see very well and proofreading is quite painful so you'll have to forgive
> and interpret from mistakes the DragonDictate may make. It
>    I was taught about form and speech synthesis by Dennis Klatt, and by
> reading but before my involvement with him I knew next to nothing. One of
> the questions in the early days was could you achieve higher intelligibility
> by super articulation and do better than natural speech. What testing
> revealed was really two things. At normal speaking rates the answer always
> seem to be that the closer you matched to real speech the better the
> intelligibility at higher speaking rates above that which humans could
> normally achieve things were little different and I'm not going to go into
> the specifics of what we did to make things better at high speed other than
> to say they were based on knowledge of speech perception.
>      The second thing we learned is that listening to a synthesizer has a
> very fast but steep learning curve. Somewhat analogous to learning to
> understand a person with a strong dialect or speech impediment. One of the
> problems we encountered is that people often preferred the version they were
> used to over any succeeding version. But actual tests did not support the
> preference.
>      One example is the way tilt was done inside DECtalk. The original
> mechanism was a crude approximation of spectral tilt. Dennis before he died
> developed a much more accurate (meaning matching human production) tilt
> filter that was not able to be incorporated to a later date. As a point of
> interest Dennis was so dedicated that he last modified the DECtalk code 3
> days before he passed away. So the spectral tilt was changed and this
> changed what you might consider the tone control on an old radio or record
> player. That is just one of many reasons why DECtalk change slightly over
> the years.
>       The 5.0 DECtalk Incorporated the work of Prof. Ken Stevens who was
> Dennis is blessed MIT and close friend. The 5.0 code unfortunately did not
> yield the expected results, but we did learn a lot from the attempt. This
>        there are even some changes to DECtalk that would change the way it
> sounds from any particular version, such as Intonation that I am unwilling
> to revert because I know for a fact that they caused loss of information. So
> my goal is very simple I am working to create a very functional intelligible
> DECtalk to put back out, I am unwilling to try and make it sound exactly
> like any given person wants to. I have been through this before and the year
> is very sensitive and if you directly comparing two versions side-by-side
> you not testing anything but whether did the same and that is an exercise in
> futility. T
>
> Any specific issues I can address. Secondly as a word of warning to
> listeners providing feedback. The other thing we've learned is that
> listeners are excellent at deciding that something is not right, but are
> absolutely terrible at exactly pinpointing the problem. The reason for this
> is quite simple people judge the output as speech which it only kinda is, by
> this I mean that a synthesizer can make mistakes that humans cannot possibly
> do and as a consequence can't possibly recognize. An example of this is that
> after so many years of working with it I have learned to hear a foreman
> that's moving too rapidly, but most people cannot hear it. This is because
> to make life easy we try to lead nor stuff that's not important in our
> language, such as the nasal lifestyles in French or the retro flex ours in
> American English which is Sheehan have a heckuva time hearing.
>
>
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