[asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

[Erik (Caneris)]

Festival sucks. Cepstral sucks less. The End.

In my experience, it depends on the specific app, who's paying, and who's going to be the victim, err...user listening to it. This is the difference between domain/context specific phrases/words to pronounce vs. general stuff, a client on a tight budget or not, the users being internal vs. customers/public, and so on.

Cepstral is a $30 TTS engine. It's not too bad, but you'll find mostly things like Realspeak deployed in large scale "professional" deployments, such as those used by the "big boys", telcos/banks/airlines. We deployed Cepstral recently for a client, for a phone-in service used by the general public, and I can tell you that there was quite a bit of work in "teaching" it with SSML how to pronounce stuff.

Again, it really depends on your specific situation. You should definitely try out those two at least and also ensure that the client/stakeholders are aware of limitations. There's a certain expectation of "it will speak perfectly" these days, followed by disappointment and blame when reality hits them.

Regards,
--
Erik
Caneris
Tel: 647-723-6365
Fax: 647-723-5365
Toll-free: 1-866-827-0021
www.caneris.com

________________________________________
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Eric Fort [eric.fort at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:52 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: [asterisk-users] cepstral vs festival

I'm about to begin working on an ivr project to do database backed scheduling.  I would like to use text to speech in some places.  What are the differences in using festival vs. Cepstral?  How are they similar, how are they different?  Is one really better than the other?  How and Why?

Thanks,

Eric