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DS development > Speech synthesizer?

#151939 - tepples - Thu Mar 06, 2008 10:10 pm

Originally in reply to Hyena

Is there any Free speech synthesizer that can speak arbitrary English words, such as the (keyboard-entered) name of a character, and run in real time on a GBA or DS?
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Last edited by tepples on Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:40 pm; edited 1 time in total

#151944 - nczempin - Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:21 pm

tepples wrote:
Is there any Free speech synthesizer that can speak arbitrary English words, such as the (keyboard-entered) name of a character, and run in real time on a GBA or DS?



Free as in GPL? Not sure if the source is available for it, but there is a "DSSpeech" linked on:

http://headkaze.drunkencoders.com/

Direct download:
http://headkaze.drunkencoders.com/download/DSSpeech.zip

(surely you have seen it?)

#151946 - tepples - Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:39 pm

nczempin wrote:
there is a "DSSpeech" linked on:

http://headkaze.drunkencoders.com/

Direct download:
http://headkaze.drunkencoders.com/download/DSSpeech.zip

(surely you have seen it?)

I had seen that one before, but it was so robotic it wasn't funny. I've heard better voice out of an Apple IIe.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#151954 - nczempin - Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:22 am

tepples wrote:
nczempin wrote:
there is a "DSSpeech" linked on:

http://headkaze.drunkencoders.com/

Direct download:
http://headkaze.drunkencoders.com/download/DSSpeech.zip

(surely you have seen it?)

I had seen that one before, but it was so robotic it wasn't funny. I've heard better voice out of an Apple IIe.


Well, I remember from way back when the Commodore 64 was singing Stars & Stripes. I guess I wasn't expecting anything but robotic voices.

Actually the DSSpeech sounds very much like a Vocoder. It would certainly interest me to find out more about the requirements of a decent text-to-speech, and how far one can push the DS to do it, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view.

Just one observation from me, a fairly recent DS-convertite: DS has some speech recognition capabilities, surely that is far more strenuous on the hardware than synthesizing, isn't it?

BTW increasingly I'm thinking about collecting a list of apps-that-would-be-nice-to-see-a-DS-version-of, for prospective developers to choose some nice projects.

To me as a new kid on the block it seems that the DS homebrew community is somewhat fragmented (it is not like there are some definite one-stop-shops that will tell you all you need to know, although this place seems to comes close), or perhaps this is a distorted view or perhaps an indication that it is very dynamic.

Just some ideas of things that I would like to see (and perhaps already exist) and if I could clone myself even work on, that either don't exist, or could become a bit more polished:
Subtractive Synthesizer
IFR Simulator (like on the VIC 20)
VIC 20 emulator (port of VICE?)
Skat (German card game)
Nine Men's Morris (I'm working on a version)
Bridge
lots of ideas along the lines of flashcards programs; somehow letting the DS help you memorize/learn facts/vocab/stuff.
those dev tools I mentioned: profiler & source level debugger
Football/Soccer Manager (I'm working on porting Paul Robson's SDL port of the original FM)


Oh, and please point me to some examples of some of that allegedly superior Apple II speech synthesis; I'd like to form my own opinion.

#151965 - tepples - Fri Mar 07, 2008 4:45 am

nczempin wrote:
Just one observation from me, a fairly recent DS-convertite: DS has some speech recognition capabilities, surely that is far more strenuous on the hardware than synthesizing, isn't it?

That is correct everywhere except possibly in a galaxy far, far away. (In the Star Wars universe, it appears that R2 astromech droids can recognize speech but can't produce it.)

Quote:
Just some ideas of things that I would like to see (and perhaps already exist) and if I could clone myself even work on, that either don't exist, or could become a bit more polished:
Subtractive Synthesizer

That might even be useful as a first step toward a speech synthesizer, as the production of vowels and consonants involves exactly the kind of flow through tubes that subtractive synthesis was intended to model.

Quote:
Skat (German card game)

So I assume it has nothing to do with girls and cups.

Quote:
Nine Men's Morris (I'm working on a version)

Not Nine Lives' Morris?

Quote:
Bridge

Contract bridge, or P?nct?

Quote:
lots of ideas along the lines of flashcards programs; somehow letting the DS help you memorize/learn facts/vocab/stuff.

I made one of those for the GBA, but I never got around to packaging it. Who wants to see my "flash card emulator" made to run on both GBA (with GBFS) and DS (with libfat)?

Quote:
Oh, and please point me to some examples of some of that allegedly superior Apple II speech synthesis; I'd like to form my own opinion.

It was SAM. I used it to prototype phonologies for some conlangs.

Does Flite, from the makers of Festival, have any promise in this regard?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#151969 - nczempin - Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:30 am

tepples wrote:
nczempin wrote:

Oh, and please point me to some examples of some of that allegedly superior Apple II speech synthesis; I'd like to form my own opinion.

It was SAM. I used it to prototype phonologies for some conlangs.

Does Flite, from the makers of Festival, have any promise in this regard?


Ah, that was the same one that sang the US anthem on the 64.