Re: dtk-soft

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

If viavoice/elaquence create speech simply by using collections of
clicks, you have to wonder why anybody attempts any other technique -
such as that used by festival, mbrolla or dectalk. 

I'd be very interested in any pointers to documentation on speech
synthesis and tts technology as its an area I am interested in looking
into.

Tim
>>>>> "Doug" == Doug Smith <bdsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

 Doug> You were wondering why the voices in these other multi-voice
 Doug> synths sound so much worse than what outloud did. The answer is
 Doug> far from proprietary information. I have read about some of
 Doug> these synthesizers because of a project I am working on and I
 Doug> have found the cause.

 Doug> The voices in those other programs are just c programs that
 Doug> create audio recordings on the fly and attempt to play them
 Doug> back as fast as possible. This is difficult, even with the
 Doug> greatest processors. What viavoice does is just to send a
 Doug> fast-paced sequence of clicking sounds to the card in order to
 Doug> produce speech. It works just like the synths of old which had
 Doug> to have their own dedicated cards. It uses the sound card in
 Doug> the same way as, for example, the echo II for the Apple II
 Doug> series did. It just sends the sounds through to be played,
 Doug> speeding them up and slowing them down and varying the rate
 Doug> just enough to make it sound like intelligible words.

 Doug> The algorithm? No, I don't know exactly, but above is stated
 Doug> the general idea. I have an idea for a new open source synth,
 Doug> but I don't have the time right now to conduct research,
 Doug> experiments and to determine how to get it to work at an
 Doug> optimal level. i hope to begin working on it this summer, and,
 Doug> if possible, have it out soon.



 Doug> I hope this helps you understand the quality issues.

 Doug> -- Doug Smith: C.S.F.C.  Computer Scientist For CHRIST!

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-- 
Tim Cross
Senior Analyst/Programmer
Applications Group - Information Technology
University of New England
 Phone: +61 2 6773 3210
   Fax: +61 2 6773 3424
E-Mail: tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
   Web: http://www.une.edu.au/itd/systems/systems.html
---
Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?"

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