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

**chrost2007** · August 26th, 2009

MonkeeSage thanks a mill!
I'm running Intrepid amd64, so I had to download the relevant version

ftp://ftp.si.debian.org/debian/pool/...1h-2_amd64.deb

installation went smoothly, though I get this error when I try to test voices in festival:

festival> (voice_us2_mbrola)
us2_mbrola
festival> (SayText "Good morning")
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1008

snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
aplay: main:590: audio open error: Device or resource busy
#<Utterance 0x7fb7962f2d50>
festival>

any ideas?

**chrost2007** · August 26th, 2009

it was the Firefox that was occupying the sound. closed Firefox and it works.
any ideas how to make it work with Firefox running?

regards,
T

**mikeym** · August 29th, 2009

OK try this on for size! It's my hatchet job to get the functionality I used to get from my Mac where a key combination would speak any text that was highlighted on screen.

First of you need the small command line utility xsel and unicode converter uni2ascii and command line browser Lynx:

Code:

sudo apt-get install xsel uni2ascii lynx

Then copy this script to your computer and save it as speak

speak

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# Read highlighted text on screen

# convert text into usable ascii text (if anyone has a better way of 
# doing this which produces text which can be read by festival please let me know)
ascii() 
{
echo "<html><body>" > /tmp/convert.htm
cat | uni2ascii -a Q -a D 2> /dev/null >> /tmp/convert.htm
echo "</html></body>" >> /tmp/convert.htm
cat /tmp/convert.htm | lynx -stdin -dump
rm /tmp/convert.htm
}

#Stop running instance if found then exit

pidfile=/tmp/speak.pid
if [ -e $pidfile ]; then
	pid=`cat $pidfile`
	if kill -0 $pid 2> /dev/null; then
		echo "Already running...Killing process"
		# Ramble on kill
		# kill $pid 2> /dev/null
		# Stop at end of sentence kill
		for i in `ps -ef| awk '$3 == '${pid}' { print $2 }'`; do
			kill $i
		done
		exit 0
	else
		rm $pidfile
	fi
fi
 
# Otherwise speak selected text
xsel -o | ascii | festival --tts 2> /dev/null & pid=$! 
echo $pid > $pidfile
wait $pid 2> /dev/null

rm $pidfile

Save the file speak then make it executable and copy it to the path.

Code:

chmod +x speak 
sudo mv speak /usr/local/bin/

You can test it from the terminal now by running speak. Then setup a keyboard shortcut key to run speak.

If you're running Ubuntu without visual effects (no compiz) run gconf-editor and open /apps/metacity/global_keybindings and set the first available run_command, normally run_command_1 to your shortcut. I use <Super>F2. Now set the command under /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands and which ever command number you used (i.e. command_1) and put in the command /usr/local/bin/speak.

If you're running Ubuntu with visual effects (compiz) run ccsm (you may have to install it first). Then under General>Commands set command line 0 (or the 1st available) to /usr/local/bin/speak and then set your keybinding (I use <Super>F2).

The quick kill that I've defaulted to I think leaves some files lying around in the /tmp directory but I don't think this is too much of a problem as they'll just be wiped the next time you restart and wont take up much space. The other way allows festival to close down its speech process and it just keeps wittering on until it can be arsed to close it down.

**Roughnet13888** · September 29th, 2009

These codes and tips are useful. TY for them.

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**sainikudu** · December 7th, 2009

Hey great post. Thanks very much . The post seems to be very much helpful.

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**davidlarg** · December 8th, 2009

This post has made Ubuntu an OS that I will use more now.

The info on getting the highlighted text to be spoken is something that I have been looking for. Now I will use windows less.

Thank you

**XinulTar** · January 6th, 2010

Nice tutorial. Thanks!

I do have a problem though - the CMU arctic voices do play (I'm testing the SLT and CLB voices), but they sound really choppy (not robotic, just really choppy). But the demos for those voices from the CSTR website are really smooth.

Does anyone know why this might be a problem?

I've complied it using GCC4 as 64 bit, on Fedora. But I did otherwise follow these instructions.

Thanks

**shane2peru** · February 3rd, 2010

Great how to guide!!! Very informative, well written. Thanks.

**Rodney9** · March 6th, 2010

Brilliant, Thank You MonkeeSage.

This should be in Ubuntu ( and all Linux OS ) as default for people with sight problems.

Rodney

**go_beep_yourself** · March 18th, 2010

Does this work with espeak as well or do you know of a similar guide?

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