Festival voices

[mojoehand]

I have a newly installed Raspian that has all the latest updates/upgrades. I just installed Festival TTS with apt-get. This works fine, but only has one voice, which is rather lousy.

I see that the mbrola-us1 voice is available in the repository (female voice). When I go to install it with apt-get, I get the following error:
"mbrola-us1 : Depends: mbrola but it is not installable"

I don't see an "mbrola" package available for installation. How do I get this voice installed?

What I really want is the HTS female voice known as "SLT", but there isn't a package for that. I tried installing that voice using the instructions here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=751169. The voice shows as installed in Festival, but when I try to use it, I get some strange "PDF" error and Festival exits.

[deggis]

I would be thrilled to have a fix on this, too. It seems that it could be some kind of version related issue, if your error is something like "Error: HTS_Model_load_pdf: Failed to load header of pdfs." I got this one too with Ubuntu 12.10.

"References to this error on the hts-users list suggest it's because the HTS API changed and that, where the old festival accepted 2.1 voices, the new version only accepts 2.1.1 voices."

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=589614

Apparently there is some compatibility module available, but atm I'm not aware how to use it / if it solves the issue.

[mojoehand]

I finally gave up on Festival. After much searching on the net, I found mention of flite (Festival Lite). I installed it and it has the US female HTS voice included. So, problem solved.

Now for my Linux rant. I have used Linux for several projects over the years. I am no guru, but I am certainly no noobie, either. Practically every posting I found when searching for a TTS package mentioned Festival. Some mentioned espeak. Even the RPi specific posts mentioned using Festival, so naturally that is what I installed. It works great if you want it to sound like Steven Hawking. I only stumbled upon the fact that flite was already in the Raspian repository after hours of searching for a fix to the Festival voices problem.

Now, I can hear the Linux snobs saying that I am a dumbass because I should have known that flite was in the repository. Or, that I could have searched the repository and found it. Yeah, that is like pulling teeth, trying to find a package that you don't know exists.

Rant mode off. And if any of the "gurus" wish to flame me for my opinion, have a blast. I won't be responding, so you can have the last word.

[Heater]

I don't know what your "rant" is about.

So there is a program available for Linux that happens to be in the Debian repositories that you did not know about and no one told you of.

I guess that can happen for any program for any operating system. So I don't see what your complaint is.

[deggis]

I finally gave up on Festival. After much searching on the net, I found mention of flite (Festival Lite). I installed it and it has the US female HTS voice included. So, problem solved.

Wow, I'll try that too. I actually tried to postpone compiling festival on pi since it did look like the required tools wouldn't even fit to my SD at first attempt

Yes, after trying some alternative voices the default ones sound like Steven Hawking. On a sidenote, I actually found different SLT voice from this package that was compatible with the raspbian festival version:

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/downloads/festival/2.1/

Now for my Linux rant.

I think this opinion sounds just like a regular case of monday afternoon.

It's irritating, but there's always some free stuff available we just haven't heard of. I'm glad you mentioned flite.