[DECtalk] List UP?
Jake McMahan
mcmahan.jake at gmail.com
Mon Aug 29 20:32:13 EDT 2011
To me, I think the whole dad gum thing is extremely impressive and it's coming along. I am looking forward to getting my hands on this thing when it is available, and using it in my DSpeech scripts and much more.
From: ebruckert Bruckert
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 6:09 PM
To: DECtalk Discussions
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] List UP?
Okay sounds like you've done a thorough job. But I have two programs say the command line and batch mode program and speak which are both freely distributable in including source code and could certainly be included in any distribution.
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Alex H. <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Ed,
I've done some digging about how to make the SAPI5 version of DT sing.
It won't be easy to do this I'm afraid. Too many variables involved,
and no program except ttsapp.exe will pipe the exact string you send
to it to the SAPI5 engine. That's only part of the issue though.
Firstly, SAPI5, as I thought, uses some low level punctuation
filtering that comes even lower in the stack than things like text to
MP3 programs, like Verbose or TextAloud, etc. Basically, the text to
speech program (like textAloud) gets the text and adds its own
punctuation rules to the text and sends this to SAPI, and SAPI does
its own filtering/changing of the text string, so the original text
gets lost early on in the chain. There's not any real easy way around
this I'm afraid, after a good few hours reading MSDN articles and what
not. Even when talking about changing text to be pronounced better (we
could use this to make DT sing), SAPI unfortunately makes its own
rules of phonemic definitions when you specify the proper tags [3].
This basically means that it tries a one-size-fits-all approach and
some synths that are SAPI compliant still won't speak the text as the
SAPI phonemic string intends. In short, this would be a nightmare to
implement using SAPI5. At least the way I see it.
I'm thinking for the ease of use factor for singers, maybe the best
idea is a SAPI dectalk installable synth that works wiht screen
readers, and then a speak window bundled wiht it for singing. That
way, nobody is messing with sapi protocols.
Sources:
[1]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms719574%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
[2]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms717252%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
[3]
http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2010/10/using-punctuation-and-mark-up-language.html
[4]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms723638%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
Sorry for the hugely complex post, but I felt it was needed to explain
further. As always, great work and i look forward to more testing.
Alex
On 8/29/11, jake mcmahan <mcmahan.jake at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/2011 3:07 PM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
>> These are all generated by just plopping the text into speak, since
>> the scaling and interaction of these things has always varied slightly
>> the the goal now is to try to adjust things the detailed stuff like
>> little overloads for the last step.
>> I'm not sure if I reset Paul or left them at the custom voice when I
>> did the weather, so I'll resend the weather being sure it's regular
>> Paul, but in fact if everybody likes the style we can modify those
>> base parameters, as I already know that the pitch scaling is slightly
>> different so will probably have to change the pitch things but that's
>> the purpose of tweaking. On some of the voices that I fooled around
>> was so much I really don't have a feel for what's better or worse.
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Alex H. <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com
>> <mailto:linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> First, excellent job! The custom Paul voice in the weather file is
>> great. It has a lot of inflection and sounds like 4.4, which is pretty
>> impressive. The test.wav is strange though. It's very buzzy and hard
>> to understand. Just to clarify, for now, are we just testing the Paul
>> voice?
>>
>> The weather sample seems to be very articulate and precise. It doesn't
>> have any of that slurring of old versions on certain words. This is
>> great.
>>
>> Just to hear the sample at a higher rate of speed, can you do the same
>> text at about 350 wpm to see how it stands up?
>>
>> I didn't hear any of the soft tones at the end of sentences, and even
>> ran the file and amplified silences, and it's about 48 dB below
>> normal, so it's pretty quiet as it is without the code to squash the
>> humming.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Alex
>>
>> On 8/29/11, ebruckert Bruckert <edbruckert at gmail.com
>> <mailto:edbruckert at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> > First some baseline testing stuff. Do not over test it in other
>> words in the
>> > beginning this is a rough cut so if we get into too many details
>> or changes
>> > it will just all become mud. We should only make a few changes
>> at a time,
>> > the other problem may become differences of opinion especially
>> with some of
>> > the voices which were never very stable because we never really
>> liked
>> > exactly what we had. This is an old version of DECtalk so
>> occasionally you
>> > will hear little homes at the end of things during what should
>> be silence.
>> > This is a mathematical problem called a limit cycle when we're
>> finished I'll
>> > add the new code I developed to squelch it. It took us years to
>> figure out a
>> > way to get rid of it perceptually we never could get rid of it
>> > mathematically. Lastly I had to change the gain of voicing on
>> the modified
>> > voice that was sent without going into a long explanation which
>> I can later
>> > if people want the gains of the cascade vocal track have never
>> ever been
>> > constant it's a mathematical issue where you're constantly
>> trying to adjust
>> > them between quantization and overload and we've never been able to
>> > guarantee them.
>> > Lastly people can think about singing. The problem is that most SAPI
>> > applications strip stuff out so I'm looking for suggestions of
>> how we could
>> > fool it and tell DECtalk that it was supposed to go into
>> phonemic mode so it
>> > can sing. I don't know what can and cannot get through the various
>> > applications and while
>> >
>> > Again don't put too much effort in two critical listening at
>> this stage as
>> > were not fine-tuning it just training 3n where targets are
>> >
>> > On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:06 PM, jake mcmahan
>> <mcmahan.jake at gmail.com <mailto:mcmahan.jake at gmail.com>>wrote:
>> >
>> >> On 8/29/2011 11:52 AM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello everyone the good news is I had a generator the bad news
>> is I had to
>> >> use it. I'm having trouble with the 2008 free edition of visual
>> C I can't
>> >> run the debugger. But before I uninstall and reinstall it I
>> want to get
>> >> this
>> >> baseline out but it's a little bit painful because I can't run the
>> >> debugger
>> >> so I'm doing it by an archaic method. So it'll be out sometime
>> today and
>> >> then I'll reload visual C.
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 4:11 PM, jake mcmahan
>> >> <mcmahan.jake at gmail.com <mailto:mcmahan.jake at gmail.com>>wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 8/28/2011 11:40 AM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Ed K okay I'm ready. I have a base tuning of all the voices. So
>> send me
>> >> the
>> >> various files to test with and we will try and get some
>> agreement on the
>> >> voices.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 10:32 AM, ebruckert Bruckert
>> <edbruckert at gmail.com <mailto:edbruckert at gmail.com>
>> >> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I was visiting my grandson, back to woek today.....
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 11:45 PM, Alex H.
>> >> <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com
>> <mailto:linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com>>wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> Your message came through. DECTalk is alive and singing. :D
>> >>
>> >> Alex
>> >> On 8/20/2011 11:22 PM, Doris and Chris wrote:
>> >> > I have not seen any messages from this list in over a week.
>> So I was
>> >> > wondering if the list was down or if there is a problem at my
>> end or
>> >> > with my subscription.
>> >> >
>> >> > Cheers,
>> >> >
>> >> > Doris
>> >> >
>> >> > _______________________________________________
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>> >> --
>> >> --
>> >> Sent via Thunderbird.
>> >>
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>> >>
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>> >> take this, for example. This is a weather file.
>> >>
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>> >> I gotcha man. If anyone can do it, you can dude
>> >>
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> again, nice job ed
>
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