Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-05 Thread Erik (Caneris)
  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

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-04 Thread Andrew Kohlsmith (lists)
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.

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival (MRCP)

2008-12-04 Thread Erik (Caneris)
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

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-04 Thread Erik (Caneris)
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.

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-04 Thread Andrew Kohlsmith (lists)
On December 4, 2008 02:14:52 pm Erik (Caneris) wrote:
 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.

Definitely would be cool, you don't lose any ad revenue and I don't have to 
use up my minutes.

 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.

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.  :-)

-A.

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival (MRCP)

2008-12-03 Thread John Todd

On Dec 2, 2008, at 6:55 PM, Erik (Caneris) wrote:


 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 :)

Of course, and perhaps they're right in some circumstances.   But I  
don't think I'd be able to predict in what percentage of cases that's  
true.

 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.

Sounds decent.  Some inter-word delays might be in order, but I'm sure  
that's how you're earning your keep.

 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.

Of course, my test was hardly scientific.  But I re-tested at 8khz for  
both voices, and both myself and someone else in the room (a non- 
expert) were not overwhelmed with the quality difference between the  
two voices.  Totally subjective, but an apples-to-apples comparison.

 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.


No, it is not currently implemented.  Note, though, that someone in  
another post mentioned that they had built an app_realspeak, and I'll  
try to follow up with that.

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?

JT

---
John Todd
[EMAIL PROTECTED]+1-256-428-6083
Asterisk Open Source Community Director





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[asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Eric Fort
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
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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Olivier
Which non-english language do you have in mind ?
Both should differ on this.
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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Matt Gibson
In my experience cepstral has always had much nicer sounding voices, but I
haven't tinkered too much with either. There is a reason one is pay and one
free though J I believe cepstral is still offering demo's, I'd download each
and see which one gives you the performance you're looking for. 

 

Thanks,

Matt G

 

:  http://www.voipphreak.ca http://www.voipphreak.ca

:  http://www.ratemydialplan.com http://www.ratemydialplan.com

:  http://www.asterisk-jobs.com http://www.asterisk-jobs.com

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric Fort
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:53 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

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Danny Nicholas
Festival is a free voice that sounds like a machine.  Cepstral is a fee
based human voice ($30 USD per voice per CPU).  They are similar in that
they both produce mechanically timed output.  IMO, you should use festival
if this isn't a customer based interface.  If it is a CBI, use cepstral and
if you don't like it, recreate the wav files it plays (The English language
is only based on about 1700 sounds).  Cepstral is your choice if your IVR is
going to be asterisk interlaced since all asterisk voices are Cepstral
Allison out of the can.

 

  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric Fort
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 2:53 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

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Erik (Caneris)
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

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Steve Edwards
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric Fort
 Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:53 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?

On Tue, 2 Dec 2008, Matt Gibson wrote:

 In my experience cepstral has always had much nicer sounding voices, but I
 haven't tinkered too much with either. There is a reason one is pay and one
 free though J I believe cepstral is still offering demo's, I'd download each
 and see which one gives you the performance you're looking for.

Way back in the day, festival was awful and Cepstral as almost acceptable.

Now, especially with their Allison font, Cepstral is good enough than you 
can't always tell the difference -- even without using their markup 
language. The fit with the live Allison's prompts included with 
Asterisk is great.

It's fantastic for demos. You can refine the wording of your prompts 
before committing to live talent. You may decide that the tts prompts 
are good enough.

I invoke swift (Cepstral's command line tts tool) to create my prompts 
from my makefile so it's easy to make changes and everything is 
documented.

Thanks in advance,

Steve Edwards  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
Newline Fax: +1-760-731-3000

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread John Todd

On Dec 2, 2008, at 9:41 AM, Erik (Caneris) wrote:

 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


Erik -
   Have you found RealSpeak to be worth the cost?  Can Cepstral, with  
the hourly $ spent on tuning, be made to be a reasonable substitute?   
It's been a while since I did a head-to-head comparison between  
Cepstral and (anything else) so I did a quick demo of the RealSpeak  
Host-based telecom app:

   http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/demo/  (contact data required)

and the Cepstral demo:

   http://www.cepstral.com/demos/

I used the Jill (default - 8khz) for RealSpeak and Allison  
(default) for the tests, and played back the same phrase:

   Congratulations. You have successfully installed and executed the  
Asterisk open source PBX.

My results: The RealSpeak sample was more clear than the Cepstral.   
But by how much?  I should probably test with more than just that one  
phrase, but I can't say I'd prefer RealSpeak significantly over  
Cepstral in this extremely limited case.  Does RealSpeak get better  
long-term test results and comprehension/retention?  I know that  
Cepstral is $50/port - the RealSpeak pricing is un-findable, which  
tells me that it's significantly higher than Cepstral.  (Personal  
peeve: at least put your list pricing on the website! grumble)

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...

JT

---
John Todd
[EMAIL PROTECTED]+1-256-428-6083
Asterisk Open Source Community Director


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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Brent Davidson
John Todd wrote:
 Erik -
Have you found RealSpeak to be worth the cost?  Can Cepstral, with  
 the hourly $ spent on tuning, be made to be a reasonable substitute?   
 It's been a while since I did a head-to-head comparison between  
 Cepstral and (anything else) so I did a quick demo of the RealSpeak  
 Host-based telecom app:

http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/demo/  (contact data required)

 and the Cepstral demo:

http://www.cepstral.com/demos/

 I used the Jill (default - 8khz) for RealSpeak and Allison  
 (default) for the tests, and played back the same phrase:

Congratulations. You have successfully installed and executed the  
 Asterisk open source PBX.

 My results: The RealSpeak sample was more clear than the Cepstral.   
 But by how much?  I should probably test with more than just that one  
 phrase, but I can't say I'd prefer RealSpeak significantly over  
 Cepstral in this extremely limited case.  Does RealSpeak get better  
 long-term test results and comprehension/retention?  I know that  
 Cepstral is $50/port - the RealSpeak pricing is un-findable, which  
 tells me that it's significantly higher than Cepstral.  (Personal  
 peeve: at least put your list pricing on the website! grumble)

 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...

 JT

 ---
 John Todd
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]+1-256-428-6083
 Asterisk Open Source Community Director
   
This may not be a perfectly fair comparison.  Looks like you're 
comparing the RealSpeak 8khz voice to the Cepstral default Allison which 
is NOT 8khz.  If you look on the Cepstral site you'll see Desktop 
Voices and Telephony Voices.  The Cepstral Telephony voices are 8khz, 
and I suspect their quality is on par with RealSpeak.  I recently 
licensed the Allison-8Khz voice for some of the admin functions on my 
companies phone systems where I didn't want to record prompts and Flite 
was too robotic sounding.  The Allison-8khz voice is virtually 
indistinguishable from the pre-recorded Allison prompts, except for 
maybe some minor differences in inflection.  I was thoroughly impressed 
with the quality though.  For the most part it sounds like you've hired 
Allison to record custom prompts.  The Allison Desktop voice is OK, but 
sounds sort of like Allison is taking through a spinning fan blade.

When you're doing TTS comparisons be sure you're comparing apples to 
apples and not peaches to apricots.



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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Jean-Denis Girard
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

John Todd a écrit :
 My results: The RealSpeak sample was more clear than the Cepstral.   
 But by how much?  I should probably test with more than just that one  
 phrase, but I can't say I'd prefer RealSpeak significantly over  
 Cepstral in this extremely limited case.  Does RealSpeak get better  
 long-term test results and comprehension/retention?  I know that  
 Cepstral is $50/port - the RealSpeak pricing is un-findable, which  
 tells me that it's significantly higher than Cepstral.  (Personal  
 peeve: at least put your list pricing on the website! grumble)

For French language, I find the quality of RealSpeak to be very good.
Festival was unusable (for French); I tried Cepstral but was deceived.
The price of RealSpeak is not far from an order of magnitude higher
compared to Cepstral.

 
 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...

That's a C library. I bought RealSpeak SDK, and developed app_realspeak
for Asterisk (1.2, then ported to 1.4). I've been using it since 2005
for my IVR projects, including telcos/banks/airlines :)


Regards,
- --
Jean-Denis Girard

SysNux  Systèmes  Linux  en Polynésie française
http://www.sysnux.pf/   Tél: +689 50 10 40 / GSM: +689 79 75 27
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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Barry L. Kline
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

This has been an interesting discussion about cepstral.  My question is
why it doesn't appear to be available for 1.6 yet?  This thread has
piqued my interest in the product but a visit to Digium's website seems
to point to it being a product for Asterisk  1.6.

Barry

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=4Cdn
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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Steve Underwood
Jean-Denis Girard wrote:
 The price of RealSpeak is not far from an order of magnitude higher
 compared to Cepstral.
   

Only an order of magnitude? They've reduced it a lot then. :-)

Steve


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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Erik (Caneris)

 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

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Re: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

2008-12-02 Thread Olivier
2008/12/3 Steve Underwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Jean-Denis Girard wrote:
  The price of RealSpeak is not far from an order of magnitude higher
  compared to Cepstral.
 

 Only an order of magnitude? They've reduced it a lot then. :-)


1 order of magnitude = x10
Then, shall we say 500$/simultaneous voice ?



 Steve


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