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

Jayson Smith ratguy at insightbb.com
Wed Aug 3 19:45:42 EDT 2011 

Hi,

Here's a little more feedback.

1. I like the fact that the new sample synth seems to be a bit crisper.

2. It seems to me that vowels just before a long s sound are a bit on the 
short side. Applicable words are this, test, and the "cast" part of the word 
broadcast. Strangely, the word system sounds pretty normal.

3. It sounds like the vowel sounds in the "mer" of emergency and "broad" in 
broadcast are a bit overloaded or something. At my sound card's regular 
volume, they clip. If I decrease the audio volume with an audio editor, 
these sounds sound like they'd clip if you paid them enough.

4. Whenever you produce future samples, it would be nice imho to hear a 
longer piece of text being spoken at about 300 words per minute, which is 
the approximate rate I'm used to.
Thanks for your work! It sounds like you're nearly there, and even this is 
much better imho than 4.6.3! I always thought 4.6.3 sounded like a guy with 
a speech impediment or talking with his mouth full or something, it's kind 
of hard to describe.
Jayson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ebruckert Bruckert" <edbruckert at gmail.com>
To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Some DECtalk history and what I think we can and 
can't reasonably do


> Okay I got the feedback I need that was just the very first rough cut 
> after
> I figured out the major differences between the 4.3 samples sent me and 
> the
> present.
> Just seeing know emerge a is from my synthesizer and emerge b is from the
> original 4.3 file sent me.
>
> On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Raymond Grote 
> <musicalman1 at comcast.net>wrote:
>
>> **
>> Yes, they definitely sound pretty good. The only problems i can even 
>> think
>> of is the second one just sounds a bit too crisp for my taste, and the 
>> way
>> it combines test and of, sounds like tessof. Other than that, I like it.
>> definitely a new sound but does remind of the old.
>>
>>
>>   ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* ebruckert Bruckert <edbruckert at gmail.com>
>> *To:* DECtalk Discussions <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 03, 2011 3:42 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [DECtalk] Some DECtalk history and what I think we can and
>> can't reasonably do
>>
>> Okay as an update listen to the to wave files separately not 
>> back-and-forth
>> listen to one we waited a few minutes listen to the other. See if you 
>> agree
>> were getting closer, one of course is what you sent me
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 1:43 PM, ebruckert Bruckert 
>> <edbruckert at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> 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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>>>> listDECtalk at bluegrasspals.comhttp://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Sent via Thunderbird.
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> DECtalk mailing 
>>>> listDECtalk at bluegrasspals.comhttp://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Sent via Thunderbird.
>>>>
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>>>> http://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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