Hi David:
Actually, I didn't know that.
I am not big on accessibility or sound or anything at the lower levels and
pretty much do Application Programming for Business Systems.
So, it is the synth that handles the pitch and the sound card is not
involved in the Process to any great extent?
Is that what you are saying?
If that is the case the best bet might be to research the various synth
features to see if they support engine pitch changes.
That is also why I let Rod build the script - it is not in my technical
wheel house.
So, you guys might build a list of synths that allow for pitch changes and
those that don't and then the community would know which ones they might
want to look at without slogging through all of them guessing.
I can say Eloquence does since I am using it with Rods Script and it works
quite well indeed.
So there is one paid synth you can put in the "Supported" category.
Rick USA
-----Original Message-----
From: David [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 7:43 AM
To: Rick Thomas; Window-Eyes Discussion List; 'Rod Hutton'
Subject: Re: Cap enhanced app
Rick,
The fact that a sound card can play music, has absolutely nothing to do
with its capabilities of adjusting the pitch of a voice. Playing music,
the sound card merely plays back a pre-recorded sound file. The sound
file can be pitch-adjusted, since you can affect what bits are sent to
the sound card. For instance, a music file can have its frequency bits
altered, and it wil affect the pitch to a certain degree. Sound that is
a playback of the recordings of some sort, can be altered in the
playback software, not on the harddware of the sound card itself.
Synthetic speech, although partially being pre-recorded snip-its of
sound, is a whole other chapter of that story. The voice does not make
use of any music playback software - as you well are aware of. It has
its own dedicated software, built into the synth itself. If the
manufacturer has not built in pitch support with this software, no
matter what your software, the screen reader, or any app attempt to send
for pitch-adjusting calls, the voice will not be pitched. No matter what
sound card you use, or the rest of your computer specs. Its like with
your car. If it hass no hook on the rear end, you cannot have it pull a
caravan or trailer.
Neither has this to do with any sound card driver. The pitch support of
a voice, is solely a matter of what is built-in with the sound library
of that voice. Numerous synths on the market has no support for
pitching, and this cannot be altered by anyone else but the manufacturer
of that very synth directly. Like it or not, but your app, or other
screen readers will be out of luck in such cases. It's been one of the
missings of many a synth up through the computer history. I even have
quite a number of voices available here, running under a handful
different software. Try what you want, they do not support pitching.
Simply fact stated.
David
On 3/26/2015 12:05 PM, Rick Thomas via Talk wrote:
Hi Rod: That was a good script and you approached it in a good manner -
don't ReInvent the wheel just make it roll better.
There are indeed variables beyond your control that only some large scale
testing by others can provide feedback on.
As you mention, I do think most synths provide for pitch changes but since
I
have not researched it I cant say for sure - so didn't.
I actually forgot that a sound card and the drivers might impact this as
well and the combinations of synths and sound drivers, cards, on many
peoples machines will vary almost at every client machine.
So, the more feedback you get, and hopefully information about synths and
sound cards, the better.
Either you can have folks do the research about synth pitch or you can try
and do it yourself but it will need to be done me thinks.
As for sound cards and drivers I don't know, but don't think, they should
be
a problem since they all respond to pitch changes or there wouldn't be
music
so it depends on whether AI Squared is providing the necessary hooks to
the
various synths, if that is how it is done, and how the target synth
handles
pitch changes in their engine - likely from a performance standpoint as
you
noted with the Microsoft Test.
Anyway, I cant thank you enough for this little app since it takes away
one
of those annoyances that just add up and up and up if you spend hours and
hours and hours working with things you need to identify as having
specific
letters capitalized.
Rick USA
-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Hutton [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 6:48 AM
To: 'Rick Thomas'; 'Window-Eyes Discussion List'
Subject: RE: Cap enhanced app
Hi Rick, and this is for everyone too trying out CapEnhance,
A couple of things in your note I'd like to respond to.
First, I'm not sure if I've ever heard of a synthesizer which did not
support pitch changes.
If this were so, then, for the synthesizer in question, it would be
impossible to change pitch on the fly using the speech parameters hotkeys.
Does this actually ever happen, namely, that you cannot change pitch use
thing those hotkeys?
CapEnhance uses exactly the same method of changing pitch as the user does
using hotkeys.
Second, in my latest version of CapEnhance, I inserted a routine which
temporarily disables both the screen and keyboard capitalization before
speaking a cap and then resets them to their previous states.
This was to address the problem you had with my earlier version of the app
which produced choppy speech even with Eloquence.
Of course, I'm no wizard, and who can know what effect the app will have
with all of the various synthesizers, not to mention audio devices and
their
accompanying software.
One thing I could do is produce a version of the app which allows for tone
changes for caps along with pitch.
Again, only real-world testing would prove its effectiveness.
This app was my attempt to help you out in your difficulties, and, while
I'm
glad it works for you with Eloquence, I had serious doubts whether it
would
help everybody with all synthesizers. Smile
Indeed, I have noticed a little delay when moving over caps using the
Microsoft Speech Platform synthesizer.
Ah, but this is how we learn and progress, isn't it? smile
Thanks to you and everyone for the feedback, and please keep it coming.
Best regards,
Rod
-----Original Message-----
From: Talk
[mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf
Of Rick Thomas via Talk
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 4:51 AM
To: 'Don H'; 'Window-Eyes Discussion List'
Subject: RE: Cap enhanced app
Hi:
I peeked at the code and it looks like he sends the request to however WE
Handles the request and then WE forwards the request to the synth, think
that is what is going on.
You can google to see if your synth allows for pitch changes and if it
does
Contac t AI Squared since I don't know if there is a way of working
directly
with the synth via a script without getting pretty deep.
It works well with my Eloquence synth but I don't think I remember it
working with the Microsoft synth and I think I remember the Microsoft
synth
supporting pitch changes but since I am so weak in this arena will just
mention that googling or contacting a synth manufacturer is a good jump
off
point to find out what is possible.
It is really nice to have my caps spoken in a higher pitch again and
should
be a basic feature of any screen reader - and usually is.
PS: I had to turn off the speaking of caps in a higher pitch in the WE
Control Panel for the Screen since it was really slowing down speech but
the
CapEnhance does not have this problem at all.
Rick USA
-----Original Message-----
From: Talk [mailto:[email protected]]
On
Behalf Of Don H via Talk
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 5:27 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Cap enhanced app
Is the Cap Enhanced app supposed to raise the pitch on caps when using
either the vocalizer or vocalizer Expressive speech syns? On my system
it does not.
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