HOWTO: Make festival TTS use better voices (MBROLA / CMU / HTS)

**bixejo** · May 15th, 2008

Hi, MonkeeSage.

Thank you for your interesting post. It's indeed quite helpful for those (like me) who want to hear their computers speaking.

A simple (and probably stupid) question: do you know anything about some plugin or something like that for Firefox and/or other web browsers? I mean, something that allows you to select some text, right button click and then select the option "Say".

I apologize if this a recurrent question. I've been looking through this (and other) thread and found nothing related.

Regards, and thank you again.

**MonkeeSage** · May 16th, 2008

Originally Posted by bixejo

Hi, MonkeeSage.

Thank you for your interesting post. It's indeed quite helpful for those (like me) who want to hear their computers speaking.

A simple (and probably stupid) question: do you know anything about some plugin or something like that for Firefox and/or other web browsers? I mean, something that allows you to select some text, right button click and then select the option "Say".

I apologize if this a recurrent question. I've been looking through this (and other) thread and found nothing related.

Regards, and thank you again.

Hi there,

I also thought of this as a nice feature. But I haven't had the time to code a firefox extension for it. It would be relatively easy to write -- just to get the selected text and pass it to festival via a pipe. But time is money, and I'm poor.

As a partial solution, you might be interested in the gspeak.py code I posted in the first (or maybe second?) page of this thread. Just choose festival from the tools menu, and paste the text into the text box, then press the Speak button. Yeah, it's ghetto, but it works for now. More, better stuffs later (hopefully).

**cophew** · June 27th, 2008

Sorry if i sound thick, but is there any way to get the voices on this page
http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/fe...orevoices.html
(Such as Nina, etc) into festival? The voices above are poor at best IMO and often hard to understand (Is it the way im installing it?).

EDIT : Sorry for bumping topic

**MonkeeSage** · July 4th, 2008

Originally Posted by cophew

Sorry if i sound thick, but is there any way to get the voices on this page
http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/fe...orevoices.html
(Such as Nina, etc) into festival? The voices above are poor at best IMO and often hard to understand (Is it the way im installing it?).

EDIT : Sorry for bumping topic

No worries, it should be bumped when appropriate.

I'll be glad to try to figure out how to install those voices, but I'm not sure where to find them (google only seems to find the demo page--where are the actual sources for the voices? Are they commercial, perhaps?).

Ps. Have you tried the Nitech HTS voices from the first post? They sound really good, imo, and they aren't very large to install.

**simongales** · July 5th, 2008

Excellent HOWTO! Everything working perfectly... but one question.

I built speech-tools 1.2.96 and festival 1.96 from source under Ubuntu gutsy (7.10). It all lives in a subdirectory under my home directory.

But "make install" seems next to useless.

How do I get this deployed to /usr/local/share/festival, /usr/local/bin, etc?

TIA,
-Simon

**MonkeeSage** · July 6th, 2008

Originally Posted by simongales

Excellent HOWTO! Everything working perfectly... but one question.

I built speech-tools 1.2.96 and festival 1.96 from source under Ubuntu gutsy (7.10). It all lives in a subdirectory under my home directory.

But "make install" seems next to useless.

How do I get this deployed to /usr/local/share/festival, /usr/local/bin, etc?

TIA,
-Simon

NP.

You have to have super-user permissions to install software into /usr/*.

Code:

sudo make install

However, the preferred method would be to build a gutsy .deb package from the official source packages and install that (see section in howto), so that it can be upgraded / uninstalled automatically by the package manager.

Another alternative is to use checkinstall (get it with sudo apt-get checkinstall, then replace "make install" with "checkinstall" and choose the defaults for everything it asks you), which will build a .deb from your current source tree.

**Huss** · July 8th, 2008

The tute worked for me on Hardy.

A few notes from a noob:

- My festival.scm was in /usr/share/festival not /ect
- To get the PDF speaking function working I needed to install kttsd from synaptic rather than 'add/remove apps'
- Remember to install festlex-oald, festlex-cmu and festlex-poslex

Thanks for the great tute

**simongales** · July 9th, 2008

However, the preferred method would be to build a gutsy .deb package from the official source packages and install that (see section in howto), so that it can be upgraded / uninstalled automatically by the package manager.

This worked out well, and I have all my voices working again.

Another alternative is to use checkinstall (get it with sudo apt-get checkinstall, then replace "make install" with "checkinstall" and choose the defaults for everything it asks you), which will build a .deb from your current source tree.

This didn't seem to work - the deb package only included the docs, no binaries.

Code:

root@Mythic:/home/sgales/festival/festival# checkinstall

checkinstall 1.6.1, Copyright 2002 Felipe Eduardo Sanchez Diaz Duran
           This software is released under the GNU GPL.


The package documentation directory ./doc-pak does not exist.
Should I create a default set of package docs?  [y]:

Preparing package documentation...OK

Please write a description for the package.
End your description with an empty line or EOF.
>>  Festival Speech Synthesis System: 1.96:beta July 2004
>>

*****************************************
**** Debian package creation selected ***
*****************************************

This package will be built according to these values:

0 -  Maintainer: [ root@Mythic ]
1 -  Summary: [ Festival Speech Synthesis System: 1.96:beta July 2004 ]
2 -  Name:    [ festival ]
3 -  Version: [  ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ amd64 ]
8 -  Source location: [ festival ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]

Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue: 3
Enter new version:
>> 1.96

This package will be built according to these values:

0 -  Maintainer: [ root@Mythic ]
1 -  Summary: [ Festival Speech Synthesis System: 1.96:beta July 2004 ]
2 -  Name:    [ festival ]
3 -  Version: [ 1.96 ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ amd64 ]
8 -  Source location: [ festival ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]

Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue:

Installing with make install...

========================= Installation results ===========================
Making in bin

Remove Links: festival festival_client festival_server festival_server_control text2w                                                                                        ave

Main Links: festival festival_client

Scripts: (sh) (prl) festival_server festival_server_control

======================== Installation successful ==========================

Copying documentation directory...
./
./INSTALL
./COPYING
./doc/
./doc/festival.jpg
./doc/indexHeader.inc
./doc/cstr.gif
./doc/classHeader.inc
./doc/banner.inc
./doc/festival_tiny.jpg
./doc/edcrest.gif
./doc/Makefile
./doc/refcard.tex
./doc/festival_small.jpg
./doc/festival.head
./doc/festival_client.head
./doc/festival_client.1
./doc/est_small.jpg
./doc/est.jpg
./doc/festival.texi
./doc/festival.tail
./doc/festival_client.tail
./doc/festival.1
./doc/hierHeader.inc
./README
./NEWS
cp: cannot stat `//var/tmp/TqALQOBjJDoijMWFImCCj/newfiles.tmp': No such file or direc                                                                                        tory
grep: /var/tmp/TqALQOBjJDoijMWFImCCj/newfile: No such file or directory

Some of the files created by the installation are inside the build
directory: /home/sgales/festival/festival

You probably don't want them to be included in the package,
especially if they are inside your home directory.
Do you want me to list them?  [n]: y
Should I exclude them from the package? (Saying yes is a good idea)  [y]:

Copying files to the temporary directory...OK

Striping ELF binaries and libraries...OK

Compressing man pages...OK

Building file list...OK

Building Debian package...OK

Installing Debian package...OK

Erasing temporary files...OK

Writing backup package...OK

Deleting temp dir...OK


**********************************************************************

 Done. The new package has been installed and saved to

 /home/sgales/festival/festival/festival_1.96-1_amd64.deb

 You can remove it from your system anytime using:

      dpkg -r festival

**********************************************************************


root@Mythic:/home/sgales/festival/festival# dpkg --contents  festival_1.96-1_amd64.deb                                                                               
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:59 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:57 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:57 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:57 ./usr/share/doc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:56 ./usr/share/doc/festival/
-rw-r--r-- root/root     21893 2004-07-01 15:06 ./usr/share/doc/festival/INSTALL
-rw-r--r-- root/root      5038 2004-05-25 08:09 ./usr/share/doc/festival/COPYING
drwxrwxr-x root/root         0 2008-07-04 13:01 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/
-rw-r--r-- root/root      9001 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root       550 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/indexHea                                                                                        der.inc
-rw-r--r-- root/root       724 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/cstr.gif
-rw-r--r-- root/root       408 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/classHea                                                                                        der.inc
-rw-r--r-- root/root       435 2003-02-21 13:10 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/banner.i                                                                                        nc
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2223 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _tiny.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3659 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/edcrest.                                                                                        gif
-rw-r--r-- root/root      4884 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/Makefile
-rw-r--r-- root/root     13080 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/refcard.                                                                                        tex
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3504 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _small.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root       722 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .head
-rw-r--r-- root/root       519 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _client.head
-rw-r--r-- root/root      1897 2008-07-04 13:01 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _client.1
-rw-r--r-- root/root      1999 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/est_smal                                                                                        l.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root      4398 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/est.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root    357856 2004-05-25 08:10 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .texi
-rw-r--r-- root/root       595 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .tail
-rw-r--r-- root/root       364 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _client.tail
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2461 2008-07-04 13:01 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .1
-rw-r--r-- root/root       544 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/hierHead                                                                                        er.inc
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2387 2006-09-25 15:11 ./usr/share/doc/festival/README
-rw-r--r-- root/root      8538 2001-05-27 17:07 ./usr/share/doc/festival/NEWS
root@Mythic:/home/sgales/festival/festival#

Answering "n" to

Code:

Should I exclude them from the package? (Saying yes is a good idea)  [y]:

didn't help at all, the binaries were still left out of the deb.

Thanks for the great HOWTO!

**MonkeeSage** · July 10th, 2008

Originally Posted by simongales

This worked out well, and I have all my voices working again.

This didn't seem to work - the deb package only included the docs, no binaries.

Code:

root@Mythic:/home/sgales/festival/festival# checkinstall

checkinstall 1.6.1, Copyright 2002 Felipe Eduardo Sanchez Diaz Duran
           This software is released under the GNU GPL.


The package documentation directory ./doc-pak does not exist.
Should I create a default set of package docs?  [y]:

Preparing package documentation...OK

Please write a description for the package.
End your description with an empty line or EOF.
>>  Festival Speech Synthesis System: 1.96:beta July 2004
>>

*****************************************
**** Debian package creation selected ***
*****************************************

This package will be built according to these values:

0 -  Maintainer: [ root@Mythic ]
1 -  Summary: [ Festival Speech Synthesis System: 1.96:beta July 2004 ]
2 -  Name:    [ festival ]
3 -  Version: [  ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ amd64 ]
8 -  Source location: [ festival ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]

Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue: 3
Enter new version:
>> 1.96

This package will be built according to these values:

0 -  Maintainer: [ root@Mythic ]
1 -  Summary: [ Festival Speech Synthesis System: 1.96:beta July 2004 ]
2 -  Name:    [ festival ]
3 -  Version: [ 1.96 ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ amd64 ]
8 -  Source location: [ festival ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]

Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue:

Installing with make install...

========================= Installation results ===========================
Making in bin

Remove Links: festival festival_client festival_server festival_server_control text2w                                                                                        ave

Main Links: festival festival_client

Scripts: (sh) (prl) festival_server festival_server_control

======================== Installation successful ==========================

Copying documentation directory...
./
./INSTALL
./COPYING
./doc/
./doc/festival.jpg
./doc/indexHeader.inc
./doc/cstr.gif
./doc/classHeader.inc
./doc/banner.inc
./doc/festival_tiny.jpg
./doc/edcrest.gif
./doc/Makefile
./doc/refcard.tex
./doc/festival_small.jpg
./doc/festival.head
./doc/festival_client.head
./doc/festival_client.1
./doc/est_small.jpg
./doc/est.jpg
./doc/festival.texi
./doc/festival.tail
./doc/festival_client.tail
./doc/festival.1
./doc/hierHeader.inc
./README
./NEWS
cp: cannot stat `//var/tmp/TqALQOBjJDoijMWFImCCj/newfiles.tmp': No such file or direc                                                                                        tory
grep: /var/tmp/TqALQOBjJDoijMWFImCCj/newfile: No such file or directory

Some of the files created by the installation are inside the build
directory: /home/sgales/festival/festival

You probably don't want them to be included in the package,
especially if they are inside your home directory.
Do you want me to list them?  [n]: y
Should I exclude them from the package? (Saying yes is a good idea)  [y]:

Copying files to the temporary directory...OK

Striping ELF binaries and libraries...OK

Compressing man pages...OK

Building file list...OK

Building Debian package...OK

Installing Debian package...OK

Erasing temporary files...OK

Writing backup package...OK

Deleting temp dir...OK


**********************************************************************

 Done. The new package has been installed and saved to

 /home/sgales/festival/festival/festival_1.96-1_amd64.deb

 You can remove it from your system anytime using:

      dpkg -r festival

**********************************************************************


root@Mythic:/home/sgales/festival/festival# dpkg --contents  festival_1.96-1_amd64.deb                                                                               
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:59 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:57 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:57 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:57 ./usr/share/doc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-07-09 09:56 ./usr/share/doc/festival/
-rw-r--r-- root/root     21893 2004-07-01 15:06 ./usr/share/doc/festival/INSTALL
-rw-r--r-- root/root      5038 2004-05-25 08:09 ./usr/share/doc/festival/COPYING
drwxrwxr-x root/root         0 2008-07-04 13:01 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/
-rw-r--r-- root/root      9001 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root       550 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/indexHea                                                                                        der.inc
-rw-r--r-- root/root       724 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/cstr.gif
-rw-r--r-- root/root       408 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/classHea                                                                                        der.inc
-rw-r--r-- root/root       435 2003-02-21 13:10 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/banner.i                                                                                        nc
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2223 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _tiny.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3659 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/edcrest.                                                                                        gif
-rw-r--r-- root/root      4884 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/Makefile
-rw-r--r-- root/root     13080 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/refcard.                                                                                        tex
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3504 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _small.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root       722 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .head
-rw-r--r-- root/root       519 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _client.head
-rw-r--r-- root/root      1897 2008-07-04 13:01 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _client.1
-rw-r--r-- root/root      1999 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/est_smal                                                                                        l.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root      4398 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/est.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root    357856 2004-05-25 08:10 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .texi
-rw-r--r-- root/root       595 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .tail
-rw-r--r-- root/root       364 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        _client.tail
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2461 2008-07-04 13:01 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/festival                                                                                        .1
-rw-r--r-- root/root       544 2001-04-04 06:55 ./usr/share/doc/festival/doc/hierHead                                                                                        er.inc
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2387 2006-09-25 15:11 ./usr/share/doc/festival/README
-rw-r--r-- root/root      8538 2001-05-27 17:07 ./usr/share/doc/festival/NEWS
root@Mythic:/home/sgales/festival/festival#

Answering "n" to

Code:

Should I exclude them from the package? (Saying yes is a good idea)  [y]:

didn't help at all, the binaries were still left out of the deb.

Thanks for the great HOWTO!

NP! Glad you got it working.

I haven't used checkinstall very much, so I'm not sure what it was doing there.

**BillaMonster** · August 5th, 2008

I have cmu_us_rms_arctic_clunits set to the default voice in voice.scm and siteinit.scm, using (set! voice_default 'voice_cmu_us_rms_arctic_clunits)

When I use festival via the terminal (e.g. echo "Test." | festival --tts) it uses that voice fine. However, when I use the gnomesword 2.2.3 feature which uses festival to read text aloud, it always uses the robot-sounding kal_diphone voice.

Is there anything else I need to do to ensure cmu_us_rms_arctic_clunits is the default voice? Or is gnomesword maybe calling festival in some weird way that only uses kal_diphone?

EDIT: It works if I restart my computer, but I can't figure out how to make it work in a more timely manner.

Thread: HOWTO: Make festival TTS use better voices (MBROLA / CMU / HTS)

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Re: HOWTO: Make festival TTS use better voices (MBROLA / CMU / HTS)

External application (GnomeSword2) not using default voice

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