Hi Ken: I have to say I liked the third voice in your demo. I also
like the first but that's because I happen to use it about 16 hours a
day and over many years one gets used to listening to any voice.
Synthetic voices have come a long way over the years and I'd say that
google-tts is very comfortable to listen to. The problem is open
source synthetic voices are just now getting pretty good. That third
voice wouldn't be a hardship imo to listen to at the beginning and end
of hpr shows.
kirk/baffled
On Tue, 11 Jan 2022, Ken Fallon wrote:
Hi Mike,
As a TTS engine for reading the screen back to me I am more than happy
with it and use it continually during the day. It's not just visually
impaired people that rely on TTS. It does that job and does it well.
The objection I have to using espeak as the voice of HPR is that it is
harsh, unfriendly and not welcoming, its so bad in fact that it makes
kids cry. I speak from personal experience. When my kids were small I
made a project based on espeak (in English) for them to interact with.
It was a disaster. When the espeak voice started speaking they got
scared, started to cry, ran away, and never wanted to have anything to
do with it again.
Over the years the biggest objection to the TTS on HPR has been the
espeak voice. It has also been the biggest point of negative feedback I
get when trying to promote HPR to potential interviewees or projects.
If those are not valid enough reasons then I don't know what will
convince you. I can also assure you my desktop wallpaper is the default
supplied with my distro.
In the past it has been argued that the more natural voices are
difficult to understand when sped up. So I took the two most natural
voices from the list and posted a side by side comparison to espeak at
150%, 200%, 250%, 300%, 350%, 400%, 450%, and 500%. In my opinion the
coqui-tts_en_en_ljspeech is more understandable than espeak at every speed.
Can everyone have a listen to this and tell me your preference
https://hackerpublicradio.org/tts-espeak-ljspeech-vctk-normal-150-200-250-300-350-400-450-500-percent.ogg
Ken.
On 2022-01-11 14:35, Mike Ray wrote:
And here was me thinking about posting to the list about how much
better it is now with the softer music in the background and a nice
punchy eSpeak voice.
I still have no idea what the objection to the eSpeak voice is.
If you spend as many hours a day coding as I do, and rely on tts to
make this possible, then eSpeak is the way forward. Although I know
this may only be true for English speakers. Not sure how good eSpeak
is at other languages.
People who complain about eSpeak are probably the same people who
never get any work done because they are constantly fiddling with the
desktop wallpaper.
:-p
On 11/01/2022 10:44, Ken Fallon wrote:
Hi All,
We got a comment from takov751 via https://matrix.to/#/#hpr:matrix.org
<quote>
Greetings i am a long listener of the shows . And of course planing
to make my first show . I would like to ask question regarding tts at
the beginning of the show usually I hear the espeak robotic voice .
In the workflow have you considered using mimic1 or opentts /
Mozillatts or something along those lines ? It’s seems like these
would be compatible with licensing as well and bir more realistic
voices . A few examples https://hub.docker.com/u/synesthesiam
</quote>
Re-posted with permission
Sample voices are here: https://synesthesiam.github.io/opentts
@Mike Ray
I would like to try and get a happy balance between meeting your
needs and having a voice that is friendly. While I love espeak it is
not friendly - it literally put my kids in tears when they were
younger :-)
Could you have a listen to some of the other voices and see if any of
them come close to your requirements for TTS
FYI I find these two "friendly"
* https://synesthesiam.github.io/opentts/#coqui-tts_en_en_ljspeech
* https://synesthesiam.github.io/opentts/#coqui-tts_en_en_vctk
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