Russian voice Katerina

[Ajaja]

Hello!
The demo of russian voice Katerina (http://nextupdownloads.com/scansamples/Katerina.mp3) sounds TERRIBLE, especially in comparison with ecxellent demo on scansotf's site (http://www.scansoft.com/speechworks/rea ... languages/).
Why?

[kdwhite]

I'm actally not too sure. It doesn't help that I don't understand the language. If you can, email some Russian text to me at
ken@nextup.com and we can send you a sample back of the audio.

[Jura]

Here goes the text sample for russian language, put it please on website or at least e-mail me a sample. Because it is hard to make buy- decision without knowing detailed product information - sampling rates/quality and voice example. Is it as good as this one?
ftp://ftp.scansoft.com/pub/wav/web_demo_rur.wav

Здравствуйте, вы слушаете голос Катерины - одного из лучших синтезированных голосов для русского языка. Скансофт это ведущий производитель программного обеспечения для преобразования текста в речь. = Hello, you are listening Katherina's voice - the one of the best synthesized voices for russian language. Scansoft is one the leaders in text-to-speech conversion software.

Thanks.

[kdwhite]

New sample is at
http://nextupdownloads.com/scansamples/Katerina.wav
Make sure when you play it the previous one isn't playing, if it is it is cached on your machine.

[Ajaja]

Much better. Thanks.

[Jura]

Hi Ken,
1) is it possible co attach user prononciation dictionaries to "russian katerina" from nextup? Because some words need to be corrected since thy appear in my specific text very frequently and I'm out of my patience in listening of that it says. (In Russian many words can be writen the same way but sence changes depending upon prononciation).
2) As i understand from your last reply to my e-mail - Katerina's voice has very low speed limit - can you say approximately when this bug will be removed ( in weeks / months or one year ) , or at least send me limitation removal patch or documentation - may be on my system bug will not appear.

Best regards. Jura.

[kdwhite]

1) You can use Options->Pronunciation Editor in TextAloud to change spelling of certain words to try to correct their pronunciation.
2) The bug happens on all systems and at this point we have NO ideas on when they would be corrected, so assume the voice is sold as-is.

[Andrey]

Hello kdwhite!

What about license on the tts Katerina?
I want to buy Katerina and use this engine on the two-three or more computers in our company, we are must buy license on the every copy of engine? or how?

sorry for my broken english

[kdwhite]

Let me know if it is 2 or 3 and I can setup a special payment link for you.

[Rohan]

I test Katerina she read single words normal, but sentences be heard very bad! The words it sentanse be heard uncongruence!

[kdwhite]

Did you purchase and are testing with the version we gave you?

[Rohan]

As I know I test the last version this TTS. I listen text with CoolReader.
Is the somewhere additionaly lexical dictionary? Digit from Digalo read text with good placing. But Katerina has got cleaner words sounding.

[Rohan]

Also this voice have small gurgling

[Rohan]

http://www.synapsis.com.ru/test.wav 339 kb

"Я увижу вас снова и, надеюсь, очень скоро."

heard extremely bad!

[kdwhite]

Let me know the version of TextAloud you have. Also, she does have a speed problem for sure. Put the speed up to 10 for her.

[Rohan]

Where I can look what version I use?

[kdwhite]

Help->About.

[Rohan]

Sorry, but I didn't undrestand where is the main program windows? As I see it's only TTS engine without interface.

[kdwhite]

Are you using the voice in TextAloud? If not, grab TextAloud from
http://nextup.com/files/tabeta.exe

The voice may not work correctly in some programs because it requires unicode to handle the language, so try it out in TextAloud.

[Rohan]

I also test voice with TextAloud

[kdwhite]

Let me know which version of TextAloud by doing Help->About in TextAloud's main menu.

[Rohan]

TextAloud 2.123A

[kdwhite]

May or may not help, but grab newer beta from
http://nextup.com/files/tabeta.exe

[Rohan]

interrogative sentence reads very bad!!

[Rohan]

When you plane to update Katerina Voice ?

[kdwhite]

The only update available that we know of is one to fix the speed bug. The problem with current Katerina is you can't speed her up any, at the max speed, she is just a little too slow. I've got a fix for it, but haven't been able to make the build yet. I hope to have that done within the next week or so.

[D.Leikin]

Is this fix about appropriate pp type registry entry or something deeper?

[kdwhite]

It is the registry fix.

[D.Leikin]

Last year, I had a chance to play with Katerina for some time with a view to purchase this voice for my spouse who is very fond of russian literature. At that time Katerina had a small footprint of only about 50 MB and its quality was not as good as that of other Scansoft Realspeak products. I think the build I had access to was released about May or June 2005. Unfortunately, no online demo is now available for this voice, while the sound samples found on the net are hardly representative of the voice quality.

I wonder if Katerina has undergone any quantitative and/or qualitative change during the past 10 months or so.
Can anybody provide any comment on this issue, please?

[Jura]

Seems like no changes has been made over last six months. NextUp did not send any updates/fixes for this period for Katerina's users. Last speed limitation removal fix is in test for about one month.