Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival
Somewhat off-topic, but I'll mention briefly that it's a multi-city service and you can get more info at http://www.trafficondemand.ca/ I believe that it's still considered beta for non-Toronto. You have Kitchener/Waterloo! Yay dials Oh. No traffic. Boo-urns. Hehe...working on it ;) I'd definitely like to know when you start populating the traffic part of K/W (and separate out london, it's a poor choice to group. Kitchener/Wwaterloo/Cambridge sure... but London? That's a common Torontonian thing to do. :-) Agreed. I advised the client against that, during design, but here we are. Hopefully he requests us to change this soon. On an unrelated note, I always find the Toronto is the centre of the universe attitude quite amusing. Some clients who call us for DSL qualifications, when asked Where are you located? respond with Bathurst Shephard. No sir, what city and province? -- Erik Caneris Tel: 647-723-6365 Fax: 647-723-5365 Toll-free: 1-866-827-0021 www.caneris.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival (MRCP)
John: However, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be implemented. This is an area in which I think there is a disproportionate amount of non- discussion, since many people who would use or be interested in MRCP simply don't participate in the Asterisk project because it doesn't meet their needs out of the gate. Therefore, we see few people asking for it, in a self-fulfilling loop. Is MRCP something that is significantly lacking in Asterisk? Is it a difficult protocol to implement? Is there anyone here on -dev with the experience to do it? I don't know whether it's significantly lacking nor how difficult it is to implement, but it's certainly nice to have. It would increase the appeal of Asterisk to those used to working with MRCP-compatible resources in other platforms. That said, it can be argued that it's best to keep Asterisk simple and free of extra features. If its core purpose does not consist of interfacing with ASR and TTS engines, then some would argue that it's best to keep such features to a separate platform. Regards, -- Erik Caneris Tel: 647-723-6365 Fax: 647-723-5365 Toll-free: 1-866-827-0021 www.caneris.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival
Thanks. Unfortunately no SIP/IAX access at this time, only by dialing one of the TNs. However, I'll bring it up with the client and see if they'd want us to configure that. Somewhat off-topic, but I'll mention briefly that it's a multi-city service and you can get more info at http://www.trafficondemand.ca/ I believe that it's still considered beta for non-Toronto. Regards, -- Erik Caneris Tel: 647-723-6365 Fax: 647-723-5365 Toll-free: 1-866-827-0021 www.caneris.com From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Kohlsmith (lists) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:43 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival On December 2, 2008 07:55:00 pm Erik (Caneris) wrote: Nuance would say no :) I'd say maybe. Call up +14164854854, it's a recent project we did for a That's pretty cool! Is there any SIP or IAX access to this (aside from dialing a POTS number) ? -A. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival
Festival sucks. Cepstral sucks less. The End. In my experience, it depends on the specific app, who's paying, and who's going to be the victim, err...user listening to it. This is the difference between domain/context specific phrases/words to pronounce vs. general stuff, a client on a tight budget or not, the users being internal vs. customers/public, and so on. Cepstral is a $30 TTS engine. It's not too bad, but you'll find mostly things like Realspeak deployed in large scale professional deployments, such as those used by the big boys, telcos/banks/airlines. We deployed Cepstral recently for a client, for a phone-in service used by the general public, and I can tell you that there was quite a bit of work in teaching it with SSML how to pronounce stuff. Again, it really depends on your specific situation. You should definitely try out those two at least and also ensure that the client/stakeholders are aware of limitations. There's a certain expectation of it will speak perfectly these days, followed by disappointment and blame when reality hits them. Regards, -- Erik Caneris Tel: 647-723-6365 Fax: 647-723-5365 Toll-free: 1-866-827-0021 www.caneris.com From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric Fort [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:52 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival I'm about to begin working on an ivr project to do database backed scheduling. I would like to use text to speech in some places. What are the differences in using festival vs. Cepstral? How are they similar, how are they different? Is one really better than the other? How and Why? Thanks, Eric ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival
Erik - Have you found RealSpeak to be worth the cost? Actually my last note was probably a bit misleading because in the particular cases I mentioned RealSpeak, the platform wasn't Asterisk and Cepstral wasn't even on the radar. Can Cepstral, with the hourly $ spent on tuning, be made to be a reasonable substitute? Nuance would say no :) I'd say maybe. Call up +14164854854, it's a recent project we did for a client using Asterisk, Cepstral, and a lot of custom code. It's a free phone-in service that allows folks to get local traffic, weather, news, commuter transit, border crossing wait times, and more. There's obviously quite a bit of domain-specific, dynamic, constantly changing text, so this is certainly an example of pushing it to the max. Just think of all the street names it has the potential to mispronounce. It's a work in progress, but it's very promising. Definitely an example of a lot of hourly $ spent on tuning as you put it. My results: The RealSpeak sample was more clear than the Cepstral. Depends on what you mean by more clear. As Brent Davidson mentions, make sure you're comparing 8khz to 8khz, or similar. If you mean it pronounces things better, then I agree. That being said, I'd really be interested in hearing if anyone has done a RealSpeak-to-Asterisk conduit. I wasn't able to quickly uncover how they interact with third-party systems - is it VoIP? A C library? Some sort of HTTP socket? The more methods we can get working with Asterisk, the better, because not every implementation of a voice system has the same requirements... MRCP is the standard for interfacing with ASR and TTS engines (including RealSpeak) in other platforms. Brief Googling reveals a previous flame war on asterisk-dev regarding MRCP. I have no idea if it's implemented in Asterisk now. Regards, -- Erik Caneris Tel: 647-723-6365 Fax: 647-723-5365 Toll-free: 1-866-827-0021 www.caneris.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
