[DECtalk] List UP?

Brent Harding bharding at doorpi.net
Mon Aug 29 21:32:37 EDT 2011


I know, the automatic expansion of abbreviations drives a person up the wall 
trying to do critical things like medical transcription. I was listening to 
Jonathan Mosen do a demo of some self-voicing daisy editing app that FS 
bundles with the Plextalk, and kid me not, files sizes are measured in 
kerobytes. Is that what Microsoft does when you put kb next to a number?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alex H." <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com>
To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 7:45 PM
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] List UP?


> Hi,
>
> Just to clarify my earlier post, life would be great if Microsoft
> didn't feel the need to muck about with how SAPI5 handles punctuation
> and I'd love a singing sapi. The reality and how MS has done this
> really makes it a royal pain, at least as far as I can tell with
> little to no programming knowledge and just reading the documentation
> on how this stuff works. The great thing if we were to have a modern
> speak window for singing and skits and the SAPI for scren reading and
> other text to speech programs is that it'll still be easy to export
> songs and skits as wave files with minimal effort and ensure that this
> program will run in Windows operating systems in the future.
>
> Thanks Ed for all the tweaking and coding that has to go into a
> project like this. It's much appreciated. Things are looking up.
>
> Aelx
>
> On 8/29/11, Jake McMahan <mcmahan.jake at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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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>>   >>     >>
>>   >>
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>>   >>     <http://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk>
>>   >>     >>
>>
>>   >>     >>     take this, for example.  This is a weather file.
>>   >>     >>
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>>   >>     <http://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk>
>>   >>     >>
>>
>>   >>     >> I gotcha man.  If anyone can do it, you can dude
>>   >>     >>
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>>   >>     >>
>>   >>     >
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>>   >>
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>>   > again, nice job ed
>>   >
>>
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