Without sig for Mike. On 2019-04-16 13:46, Ken Fallon wrote: > > Hi Mike, > > I couldn't agree with Klaatu or yourself more, this comment and > command deserves it's own show. You should contact Jonathan > Duddington, and see if you can get an interview. > > However, from my own listening to this show I understood that the > context was in relation to the use case of the HPR Introduction only. > In that context many of your points do not apply. > > His walk through of the "state of the art" is something that I did > myself some years ago and I am glad he revisited it. His findings are > unfortunately (and this is again about the HPR Introduction only) that > the natural sounding voices available on Linux have not improved. Back > then they sounded old and dated, and now even more so when compared > with Amazon Echo, Apples Siri, or Google Assistant. > > I had hoped to train Mary TTS to have a HPR voice but it was beyond my > skill level to do this. I also contacted the Mycroft team to see how > they encoded Popeys voice and unfortunately it was closed source. So > we are still in the situation of having no "natural voices" available > for the many use cases where that would be useful. > > I'm including Jeroen on the bcc and he can address your criticisms > directly if he wishes to. > > -- > Regards, > > Ken Fallon > http://kenfallon.com > http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=30 > > On 2019-04-16 04:34, Klaatu wrote: >> An HPR episode on this topic would be amazing. If you're too busy, >> i'd be happy to read your email into a recorder and release the show >> in your name. >> >> On 16 April 2019 1:10:29 PM NZST, Mike Ray <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I got an error when I tried to post a comment about the latest podcast >> about TTS. >> >> I don't have the error code now as I pasted it into an email to admin >> and the email bounced. >> >> I suspect it was because my comment was too long, here it is: >> >> >> Condescending and sarcastic. >> >> Oh isn't text-to-speech such a laugh? >> >> I get really, really annoyed when people criticise eSpeak. >> >> Anybody who complains about it sounding robotic obviously was not around >> thirty years ago. >> >> eSpeak's author, Jonathan Duddington, in my humble opinion, deserves a >> Nobel prize. >> >> He has probably done more for blind and visually impaired computer >> users, like me, all over the world, than any other individual or >> organisation. >> >> In fact it is hard to name any single person who has had such an impact >> on any group of users, apart perhaps from Linus Torvalds and Richard >> Stallman. >> >> 1. It is Open Source. >> 2. It is tiny, the memory footprint is small. >> 3. It is snappy and can speak really fast, which is what we (blind >> people) use when we get used to it, speeds that would make your hair >> curl. >> 4. It probably has more language support than any other free and Open >> Source synthesiser. >> 5. It can run in a mode where it can return rendered speech, in the form >> of PCM, to a calling program, so it can be used in other programs. I >> don't think any other synth can do this. >> 6. It can even return phonemes, a mode which I have used more than once >> to provide a kind of 'fuzzy search' in a database. >> >> I regularly write and maintain library code, and application code, in C, >> C++ and/or Python, as well as Perl, and many of these code libraries >> have in excess of 100k lines. >> >> Including, incidentally, a library which used a combination of eSpeak >> and OMX to render TTS directly on the GPU of a Raspberry Pi when 'they' >> broke the ALSA driver on the Pi, which made the speech stutter and crash >> the kernel, and refused to fix it for about four years. >> >> If I spent all my time bitching about how robotic eSpeak is I would >> never get any work done. >> >> How much time do you spend when you should be writing code, worrying >> about your wallpaper or the colour of your screen's background? >> >> Or do you just not notice it after a while? >> >> Well, after spending years writing code when I can't even see the Sun >> when I stare directly at it, I can tell you I never notice what eSpeak >> sounds like. >> >> I would probably be equally at home working with flite, festival, or >> svox pico (which you missed). >> >> In addition, eSpeak is in use in NVDA, the free and Open Source Windows >> screen reader which is currently giving the multi-hundreds of pounds >> commercial offerings a real problem, and providing cash-strapped blind >> users a chance. Although now the Windows Narrator is catching up, I >> still prefer NVDA and eSpeak. >> >> MaryTTS is bloated. There was some excitement around it a few years >> ago, but it has more or less faded away in the minds of the blind and VI >> community, since it is so bloated and, as far as I know, nobody has ever >> made a successful screen reader from it. >> >> Even if there was one, it would probably make a Raspberry Pi choke. >> Whereas eSpeak runs snappily and happily on a 256k Raspberry Pi >> first-gen. >> >> The 'holy trinity' of the Linux GUI, as far as blind and VI users are >> concerned, is: >> >> 1. Orca, the GTK screen reader, written in Python, and a work of art. >> 2. speech-dispatcher, written in C, a TTS 'server' program which Orca >> connects to to send text and get speech from it. >> 3. eSpeak, although there are speech-dispatcher modules also for flite >> and festival, eSpeak is the best one IMHO. >> >> In the console: >> >> 1. SpeakUp, kernel modules including speakup and speakup_soft which make >> a console mode screen reader. >> 2. espeakup, the SpeakUp to eSpeak connector. >> 3. eSpeak. >> >> eSpeak is gold dust. >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Hpr mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://hackerpublicradio.org/mailman/listinfo/hpr_hackerpublicradio.org >
-- Regards, Ken Fallon http://kenfallon.com http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=30
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