RE: [misterhouse-users] Preferred TTS

[Bruce W. <br...@mi...>]

> I am after a few opinions on the preferences of TTS engines.
> I have tried festival thought it seems a little slow.
> Which one is the clearest?

A couple of weeks ago, something happened on my XP box and the Mike and Mary
MSV5 voices quit working.  The speech icon on the control panel says 'the
necessary engine could not be created'.  I tried re-installing V5 SDK,
copying files from machines where it still worked, and running the new XP
'System restore' option, which in theory restores everything, to a week
before when it worked.  Still no joy.  The MSV4 engine worked, as did the
MSV5 'Sample TTS Voice', which says 'bla bla bla' for everything except
about 10 words.

I like the new options with MSV5 (on-the-fly voice controls and text -> file
options for remote wav files), so I went looking for other MSV5 compatible
engines and found the AT&T ones here:

 http://www.naturalvoices.att.com

They sounded great!  A bit pricey at $100 for the sdk and 2 8khz voices
(Mike and Crystal), but I splurged.  After installing them, I liked them so
much I splurged again and spent $50 for the 16khz Rich voice.  I had to make
a few minor updates to mh to allow each voice selection, but otherwise they
worked without problem.

I tell you, a linux user, all this, because I see on their web page they
have the same engine available for rh linux 6.1, 6.2, and 7.2.    I don't
know what updates we would need to support them under mh, but I'd be happy
to work with anyone if they wanted to give it a spin.  I imagine it will be
a bit tricker than the simple COM calls we can use in Windows, but I don't
really know.  The Windows SDK docs don't have any info on the Linux
interface.

If you want to listen to the voices, you can try the demo section in the
above link, or try listening to our house here:

 http://misterhouse.net:8080/speak/

I have the 'deep thought' button setup to randomly pick one of the 3 voices.

Bruce