The Festival Speech Synthesis System version 1.4.2 and Edinburgh Speech Tools Library version 1.2.2 25th July 2001 Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules. As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C++ library, from Java, and an Emacs interface. Festival is multi-lingual (currently English (British and American), and Spanish) though English is the most advanced. Other groups release new languages for the system. And full tools and documentation for build new voices are availabel through Carnegie Mellon's FestVox project (http://festvox.org) The system is written in C++ and uses the Edinburgh Speech Tools Library for low level architecture and has a Scheme (SIOD) based command interpreter for control. Documentation is given in the FSF texinfo format which can generate, a printed manual, info files and HTML. Festival is free software. Festival and the speech tools are distributed under an X11-type licence allowing unrestricted commercial and non-commercial use alike. This distribution includes: * Full English (British and American English) text to speech * Full C++ source for modules, SIOD interpreter, and Scheme library * Lexicon based on CMULEX and OALD (OALD is restricted to non-commercial use only) * Edinburgh Speech Tools, low level C++ library * British English Male (for residual LPC resynthesis 8k and 16k versions) * 2 American English Male (for residual LPC resynthesis 8k and 16k versions) * 4 other voices using MBROLA based diphone synthesis (1 British Male, 2 American Males and 1 American Female). * Castilian Spanish Male (for residual LPC resynthesis 11k version) * British English Male (for spike excited LPC resynthesis 10k version) * Full documentation (html, postscript and GNU info format) Festival version 1.4.2 sources, voices, and Linux binaries are available from http://festvox.org/festival Requirements To run Festival you need: * A Unix machine, Festival has compiled and run on Suns (SunOS and Solaris), FreeBSD, Linux, SGIs and DEC Alphas but should be portable to any standard Unix machine. * A C++ compiler: we have used GCC version 2.7.2, 2.95.x SunCC 4.1 nd 4.2, and egcs. Other C++ compilers are probably possible with perhaps some minor chanages * GNU Make any recent version * Audio hardware, /dev/audio (8 bit and 16 bit on Suns, Linux and FreeBSD) and NCD's NAS network transparent audio system are supported directly but Festival supports the execution of any Unix command that can play audio files. There is also support for building the system under Windows NT and 95/98/2000. We have successfully ran the system complied with Cygnus' GNU win32 package and Microsoft's Visual C++, instructions are included We intend to distribute binary distributions for major architectures particularly Linux and Solaris, we will also be releasing binaries for Windows. New in 1.4.2 version * Support for the new versions of C++ that have been released * Visual C++ 6.0 suport * uses configure * substantial updates to the clunits unit selection module a simple talking clock voice is included in the release more general unit selection voices will follow * lots of small bugs fixeds * a few very hard bugs fixes (client/server race condition) (dropped bytes in reading files when machine overloaded) (FreeBSD memory/gc problem) * default waverform type is now RIFF. * "Building Voices in Festival" document describing process of building new voices in the system http://festvox.org/ With this release we wish to remember Dr Mike W Macon of OGI who passed away in March 2001. Mike was one of the first non-Edinburgh people to take on Festival and make substantial improvements. His diphone voice and LPC code (mwm_diphone/OGIresLPC) is one of the best diphone voices in the system. We worked closely him and enjoyed and number of joint visits, and we acknowledge his help with the whole system. However his code, and his voice will continue to speak to us. Alan W Black (CMU) and Rob Clark (Edinburgh) 25th July 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alan W Black email: awb@cs.cmu.edu Language Technologies Institute http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/ Carnegie Mellon University tel: +1-412-268-6299 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh PA, 15213, USA. fax: +1-412-268-6298