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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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
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?<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
Alex<br>
On 8/3/2011 11:17 AM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
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<div> 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</div>
<div> 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.</div>
<div> 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.</div>
<div> 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.</div>
<div> 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</div>
<div> 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 </div>
<div> </div>
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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<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Sent via Thunderbird.</div>
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