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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>wow! that almost sounds like the older versions of
Dectalk! does the inflection sound as good as the older dectalks do? For
example, if you were to have dectalk say, I want to go home. now! The older
versions had a lot of inflections in it, which I really liked. not many synthes
nowadays have that much expressive inflection as dectalk has, even if the
inflections of other synths are set to max.</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=edbruckert@gmail.com href="mailto:edbruckert@gmail.com">ebruckert
Bruckert</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=dectalk@bluegrasspals.com
href="mailto:dectalk@bluegrasspals.com">DECtalk Discussions</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, August 03, 2011 12:42
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [DECtalk] Some DECtalk
history and what I think we can and can't reasonably do</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>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<BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 1:43 PM, ebruckert Bruckert
<SPAN dir=ltr><<A
href="mailto:edbruckert@gmail.com">edbruckert@gmail.com</A>></SPAN>
wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote>agreed
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=h5><BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Alex H. <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:linuxx64.bashsh@gmail.com"
target=_blank>linuxx64.bashsh@gmail.com</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote><U></U>
<DIV bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">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.<BR><FONT
color=#888888><BR>Alex</FONT>
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR><BR><BR>On 8/3/2011 1:13 PM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">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<BR>
<DIV>On all I can do is my best. </DIV>
<DIV> 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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Alex H. <SPAN><<A
href="mailto:linuxx64.bashsh@gmail.com"
target=_blank>linuxx64.bashsh@gmail.com</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>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:
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<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.
<DIV><PRE>
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<DIV>-- <BR>Sent via
Thunderbird.</DIV></DIV><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>DECtalk
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<DIV>-- <BR>Sent via
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