Re: [Espeak-general] Modifying female English voice file problems

[Jonathan D. <jo...@ta...>]

On 01 Jul, <kr...@ao...> wrote:

> I am new to Espeak. I'm having problems modifying English voice files,
> specifically the default, 'en'.

'en is not the default voice.
The default voice is taken from the file: espeak-data/voices/default.
This is used if you do not specify a voice for eSpeak.  eg:

espeak -v en "hello world"

uses the "en" voice.

espeak "hello world"

uses the "default" voice.

> As I understand it, I should edit the file, 'en', found in
> '/usr/share/espeak-data/voices/data/'

It's in espeak-data/voices/en

>      espeak -g 0.5 -ven+f2 -p65 -s170 'This is a multi-syllabic
> adventure' -w /var/www/html/tmp/test.wav

That will use the voice "en" and the voice variant "f2".  The voice
variant is taken from the directory: espeak-data/voices/!v

-ven+f2 

Takes the voice file: espeak-data/voices/en/en  and then applies the
attributes which are in the voice variant file: espeak-data/voices/!v/f2

If you want to try to improve the female voice, or make other voice
variants, then use or modify voice variants in espeak-data/voices/!v or
add new voice variants there.

Only change language voices for attributes which are specific to that
language.  More general variations such as female, echo, whisper, etc
should be done in a voice variant file in espeak-data/voices/!v which
can then be applied to any language.

> What I'm trying to accomplish is to use a female English voice, but
> eliminate or lessen the very 'watery' echo in this voice.

The "f2" variants includes an "echo" attribute, so perhaps you want to
remove that line.

> Now, looking at this, I wonder whether the *en file is even used, due
> to the

I don't understand what is the asterisk in "*en".