Re: free software speech?

["Greg E. Priest-Dorman" <priestdo@cs.vassar.edu>]

Hi,

Just a little clarification (perhaps obvious, perhaps not).

To use the "software speech" options you still need hardware.  You
just don't need a dedicated text-to-speech card like a double talk or
a dectalk, instead you need a soundblaster or similar card.  While it
may be true that many computers do come with this already installed, I
just wanted to mention it as the poster may need to purchase that.  

Under Linux there is a small device you can build for the parallel
port instead of a hardware card at all, but my understang is that its
sound and speech quality, while good for the $20 or so of parts
required to build it, is not clean enough for those of us who would be
relying on it as a primary output device.  I have not heard it speak
but know of somone using festival through it.

Lastly if you are going to use software text-to-speech macke sure you
have a fast enough machine.  In hardware text-to-speech the processing
of the speech is done on the board, with software text-to-speech it
happen in your processor.

Just my 2 cents.

--
 Greg Priest-Dorman
 priestdo@cs.vassar.edu      NO SOLICITING


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