[Asterisk-Users] Cepstral

[Jim Archer]

Thanks William and John, I'll look again for that download. Comments 
below...

--On Sunday, July 10, 2005 1:50 PM +0200 Wilson Pickett 
<spamsucks2005 at gmail.com> wrote:

> FWIW? I bought that voice and I find it amusing, but not ready for
> prime time. I had it read articles from a publication and it was
> ludicrous.  I can understand the people talking about ATT, I think I
> heard a demo that was very convincing.

What is ATT?  Is it another text to speech engine?  I installed Festival a 
few days ago and have been playing with it.  It sounds okay, but I decided 
to look to see if I could find something better. Some searching on this 
list and elsewhere revealed that people were raving about Cepstral, so I 
figured I would try it.  I found their demo page and, honestly, didn't 
think it sounded much better than Festival.  But I like that it had 
different voice options and Festival seems to have an Irish accent.  Not 
that I mind an Irish accent, but in the US it would not be expected.

Is there another product I should be looking at?  I don't even know for 
sure what I am going to do with it yet, but I am certain I'll think of 
something. This is too cool not to use, but only if it is useful.

> So much depends on what you are trying to do. I just wanted to have a
> way to allow asterisk to talk in a demo, to show the concept.
> Unfortunately, showing a talking server with Cepestral's David is
> little like showing a prototype website: people don't always have the
> imagination (like we all do here :)  to see what this would be like
> when actually done (or using a better voice in this case).

People can be turned off very quickly.  That's exactly why, whatever I end 
up doing with this, it needs to sound clear and be understandable.  No one 
gives anything a second chance :(

Jim