SAPI 4
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 6:54 pm
Hi,
I've recently bought NextUp Talker, and so far I'm very pleased using it.
I'm using AT&T Natural Voices ( TTS Engine 1.4 )
I've been surprised, in good, noticing that SAPI 4 tags are accepted and correctly transmitted to the engine.
This is not mentioned in the doc, it might be a good topic to add, because this feature opens a all new world of speech synthesis from your application.
I'm using it for 'artistical' content creation, so I understand this has little to do with physical limitations or conversation tools, but I just wanted to let you know there are some other practical applications, and in those contexts, the SAPI 4 support ( or any markup language support ) is unvaluable for 'artistical' voice and speech synthesizing control.
I've encountered an issue however, regarding the "Advanced Editing" Tool from the "Pronunciation Editor". Despite the fact it is mentioned to work with the TTS engine, it doesnt ( or I didnt find a way to make it work ), and no AT&T voices are available in the "Test Voice" drop down menu.
This is a minor issue, because the same functionality is available externaly through the WinDictEdit tool from AT&T, so we can directly modify the used dictionary(ies) ( you can use several dictionaries at the same time by editing the tts.cfg file), and as soon as we change the voice in NextUp Talker ( from Mike to Crystal for instance ), modifications are taken into account.
Another minor issue, pause between words inferior to 0.1 ( it seems ) are not taken into account. Again, this is a minor issue, thanks to the SAPI 4 support.
I do have a suggestion however: Adding the concept of "libraries" for the Predifined Phrases, so we can save/load "libraries" of predifined phrases.
That's it. Thanks for this great application!
Guy.
I've recently bought NextUp Talker, and so far I'm very pleased using it.
I'm using AT&T Natural Voices ( TTS Engine 1.4 )
I've been surprised, in good, noticing that SAPI 4 tags are accepted and correctly transmitted to the engine.
This is not mentioned in the doc, it might be a good topic to add, because this feature opens a all new world of speech synthesis from your application.
I'm using it for 'artistical' content creation, so I understand this has little to do with physical limitations or conversation tools, but I just wanted to let you know there are some other practical applications, and in those contexts, the SAPI 4 support ( or any markup language support ) is unvaluable for 'artistical' voice and speech synthesizing control.
I've encountered an issue however, regarding the "Advanced Editing" Tool from the "Pronunciation Editor". Despite the fact it is mentioned to work with the TTS engine, it doesnt ( or I didnt find a way to make it work ), and no AT&T voices are available in the "Test Voice" drop down menu.
This is a minor issue, because the same functionality is available externaly through the WinDictEdit tool from AT&T, so we can directly modify the used dictionary(ies) ( you can use several dictionaries at the same time by editing the tts.cfg file), and as soon as we change the voice in NextUp Talker ( from Mike to Crystal for instance ), modifications are taken into account.
Another minor issue, pause between words inferior to 0.1 ( it seems ) are not taken into account. Again, this is a minor issue, thanks to the SAPI 4 support.
I do have a suggestion however: Adding the concept of "libraries" for the Predifined Phrases, so we can save/load "libraries" of predifined phrases.
That's it. Thanks for this great application!
Guy.