From: Christi Scarborough <christi_at_chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 01:04:37 +0100

Just a quick note to announce that I am releasing my spoken
non-synthesised) voice file under the GPL. The content has not changed
since the previous release, but the README contains detail that may be
of interest to other people wishing to work with voice files.

I've also released a package containing the WAV files that the voice
file was made from along with a sample of the noise so people can try
noise reduction techniques on it if they like. Be warned - at 30mb,
it's a largish download.

The files are located at
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~christi/public/rockbox/

Here's a copy of the README file for your reference:

UK English spoken voicefont for Archos players/recorders with Rockbox
---------------------------------------------------------------------

version 1.0
27th May 2004

Christi Alice Scarborough
rockbox_at_slappy.greenend.org.uk
Distributed under the GPL - see file COPYING for details.

This is a set of voice files for the Rockbox MP3 Jukebox software for
Archos player/recorder(inc. v2)/recorder FM models. Unlike most of the
other voicefonts available, this set is created using a real human voice
  rather than speech synthesis, so is hopefully a bit more natural
sounding. It does, unfortunately, suffer from recording hiss, but some
users will be prepared to put up with a little hiss in the voice prompts
for a natural voice.

I only speak UK English, so that's the variant that is available.

Please report any bugs back to me.

Useful Webpages
---------------

For more information about Rockbox, see http://rockbox.haxx.se/.

http://rockbox.haxx.se/download/ latest stable version of Rockbox
http://rockbox.haxx.se/docs/ Rockbox documentation - v. useful
http://rockbox.haxx.se/daily.shtml Rockbox daily builds are here

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~christi/public/rockbox/
Source for the latest version of the ukspoken_voicefont package

http://joerg.hohensohn.bei.t-online.de/archos/speech/voicefont/
Here are some machine generated voicefont files.

http://arnold-j.bei.t-online.de/Rockbox/
Alternative English and German voicefont files.

Installation
------------

The only file that needs to be installed on the Jukebox is
english.voice, which should be copied to the .rockbox/lang/ subdirectory
on your Jukebox. The latest stable version of Rockbox (2.2) at the time
of writing does not include support for voice fonts, so you will need to
install a daily build from the rockbox website (see above). Version 2.3
will include the necessary support, and installation should then be a
matter of copying the voice file as above.

You will need to turn on voice menus in the Jukebox configuration. See
the rockbox manual for details of how to change your configuration.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HERE BE DRAGONS - YOU PROBABLY DON'T NEED TO READ PAST THIS POINT UNLESS
YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR OWN VOICEFONT FILES. THIS SECTION ASSUMES THAT YOU
HAVE ENOUGH TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE TO USE A COMMAND LINE, DOWNLOAD AND
INSTALL PROGRAMS, ETC.

Further Resources
-----------------

These links are of use if you're wanting to generate your own voicefont
files


http://www.cdex.n3.net/
CDex - for converting WAV files to MP3s under Windows.

http://lame.sourceforge.net/
LAME - can also be used directly to convert WAVs to MP3s - Windows
or Linux

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity - used for recording and editing the source that was used to
create the WAV files - Windows or Linux

http://joerg.hohensohn.bei.t-online.de/archos/speech/voicefont/authoring_tools/
Source and Windows executable for the voicefont program used for
creating .voice files.

Packages
--------

There are three packages for this voicefont file - they are as follows:

ukspoken_voicefont_1.0.zip

The file that most people will need. It contains the compiled voicefont
file ready for installation. If you aren't interested in hacking the
voice files about, this is all you will need.

ukspoken_voicefont_wavs_1.0.zip

This file (~30MB) contains the WAV files that were used to generate the
voicefont file. It contains the files you need to 'roll your own'.
There is also a sample of line noise to aid in running noise reduction
software on the WAV files.

voicefont audacity source
The original project file containing all of the recorded samples. This
loads into Audacity, the open source sound editing software that I used
for recording and creating the wav files above. This is HUGE (200MB) and
as such I can't make it available for download. However, it is available
on CD for a small handling charge payable via Paypal. Email
rockbox_at_slappy.greenend.org.uk for details. Under the terms of
the GPL, there are no restrictions on redistributing this CD and its
contents. (So if you have webspace and you want to put it up there,
this would be the way to go about getting it.)

Building
--------

To build a voicefont file:

1) Download ukspoken_voicefont_wavs_1.0.zip (or make your own WAVs, e.g.
from the audacity source or by recording your own).

2) Convert the WAV files to MP3. (I used CDex for Windows which uses
the LAME MP3 encoder) The settings I used were variable bit rate, VBR
quality 0 (max), mono mode, and MPEG II encoding with output samplerate
of 16,000 Hz. (The settings are tradeoffs between quality and size. I
don't claim to necessarily have picked the best ones.)

3) Download the voicefont.exe program from the site above or the source
if you're using Linux. The program builds cleanly using gcc. If
you're generatiing your own samples, you might want to apply the
voicefont.ignore.empty.patch provided in the wavs archive before
compiling, which is a quick and dirty way to make sure you can tell if
any files are actually missing.

4) Run the voicefont program. It displays a usage message when run
without arguments. The syntax will be something like:

voicefont english.lang samples english.voice

assuming you are running it from the directory you unpacked the wav
archive to, and that you created the MP3 files in the same directory

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Received on 2004-05-28