273 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
273 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
||
|
|
Flite: a small run-time speech synthesis engine
|
||
|
|
version 1.4-release
|
||
|
|
Copyright Carnegie Mellon University 1999-2009
|
||
|
|
All rights reserved
|
||
|
|
http://cmuflite.org
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Flite is a small fast run-time speech synthesis engine. It is the
|
||
|
|
latest addition to the suite of free software synthesis tools
|
||
|
|
including University of Edinburgh's Festival Speech Synthesis System
|
||
|
|
and Carnegie Mellon University's FestVox project, tools, scripts and
|
||
|
|
documentation for building synthetic voices. However, flite itself
|
||
|
|
does not require either of these systems to compile and run.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The core Flite library was developed by Alan W Black <awb@cs.cmu.edu>
|
||
|
|
(mostly in his so-called spare time) while employed in the Language
|
||
|
|
Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. The name
|
||
|
|
"flite", originally chosen to mean "festival-lite" is perhaps doubly
|
||
|
|
appropriate as a substantial part of design and coding was done over
|
||
|
|
30,000ft while awb was travelling, and (usually) isn't in meetings.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The voices, lexicon and language components of flite, both their
|
||
|
|
compression techniques and their actual contents were developed by
|
||
|
|
Kevin A. Lenzo <lenzo@cs.cmu.edu> and Alan W Black <awb@cs.cmu.edu>.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Flite is the answer to the complaint that Festival is too big, too slow,
|
||
|
|
and not portable enough.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
o Flite is designed for very small devices, such as PDAs, and also
|
||
|
|
for large server machines with lots of ports.
|
||
|
|
o Flite is not a replacement for Festival but an alternative run time
|
||
|
|
engine for voices developed in the FestVox framework where size and
|
||
|
|
speed is crucial.
|
||
|
|
o Flite is all in ANSI C, it contains no C++ or Scheme, thus requires
|
||
|
|
more care in programming, and is harder to customize at run time.
|
||
|
|
o It is thread safe
|
||
|
|
o Voices, lexicons and language descriptions can be compiled
|
||
|
|
(mostly automatically for voices and lexicons) into C representations
|
||
|
|
from their FestVox formats
|
||
|
|
o All voices, lexicons and language model data are const and in the
|
||
|
|
text segment (i.e. they may be put in ROM). As they are linked in
|
||
|
|
at compile time, there is virtually no startup delay.
|
||
|
|
o Although the synthesized output is not exactly the same as the same
|
||
|
|
voice in Festival they are effectively equivalent. That is flite
|
||
|
|
doesn't sound better or worse than the equivalent voice in festival,
|
||
|
|
just faster, smaller and scalable.
|
||
|
|
o For standard diphone voices, maximum run time memory
|
||
|
|
requirements are approximately less than twice the memory requirement
|
||
|
|
for the waveform generated. For 32bit archtectures
|
||
|
|
this effectively means under 1M.
|
||
|
|
o The flite program supports, synthesis of individual strings or files
|
||
|
|
(utterance by utterance) to direct audio devices or to waveform files.
|
||
|
|
o The flite library offers simple functions suitable for use in specific
|
||
|
|
applications.
|
||
|
|
Flite is distributed with a single 8K diphone voice (derived from the
|
||
|
|
cmu_us_kal voice), a pruned lexicon (derived from
|
||
|
|
cmulex) and a set of models for US English. Here are comparisons
|
||
|
|
with Festival using basically the same 8KHz diphone voice
|
||
|
|
Flite Festival
|
||
|
|
core code 60K 2.6M
|
||
|
|
USEnglish 100K ??
|
||
|
|
lexicon 600K 5M
|
||
|
|
diphone 1.8M 2.1M
|
||
|
|
runtime <1M 16-20M
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
On a 500Mhz PIII, a timing test of the first two chapters of
|
||
|
|
"Alice in Wonderland" (doc/alice) was done. This produces about
|
||
|
|
1300 seconds of speech. With flite it takes 19.128 seconds (about
|
||
|
|
70.6 times faster than real time) with Festival it takes 97 seconds
|
||
|
|
(13.4 times faster than real time). On the ipaq (with the 16KHz diphones)
|
||
|
|
flite synthesizes 9.79 time faster than real time.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Requirements:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
o A good C compiler, some of these files are quite large and some C
|
||
|
|
compilers might choke on these, gcc is fine. Sun CC 3.01 has been
|
||
|
|
tested too. Visual C++ 6.0 is known to fail on the large diphone
|
||
|
|
database files. We recommend you use GCC under Cygwin or mingw32
|
||
|
|
instead.
|
||
|
|
o GNU Make
|
||
|
|
o An audio device isn't required as flite can write its output to
|
||
|
|
a waveform file.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Supported platforms:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
We have successfully compiled and run on
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
o Various Intel Linux systems (and iPaq Linux), under various versions
|
||
|
|
of GCC (2.7.2 to 4.x)
|
||
|
|
o FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x
|
||
|
|
o Solaris 5.7, and Solaris 9
|
||
|
|
o Initial support for Mac OS X
|
||
|
|
o Windows 2000/XP under Cygwin 1.3.5 and later
|
||
|
|
o Support for WinCE (2.11 and 3.0) WM (5.x plus) is included
|
||
|
|
o PalmOS 5.x devices (Treo 600, Zire 31 and Tungsten C)
|
||
|
|
o Successfully compiles and runs under 64Bit Linux architectures
|
||
|
|
o OSF1 V4.0 (gives an unimportant warning about sizes when compiled cst_val.c)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Other similar platforms should just work, we have also cross compiled
|
||
|
|
on a Linux machine for StrongARM. However note that new byte order
|
||
|
|
architectures may not work directly as there is some careful
|
||
|
|
byte order constraints in some structures. These are portable but may
|
||
|
|
require reordering of some fields, contact us if you are moving to
|
||
|
|
a new archiecture.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
News
|
||
|
|
----
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
New in 1.4 (December 2009)
|
||
|
|
o crude multi-voice selection support (may change)
|
||
|
|
o 4 basic voices are included 3 clustergen (awb, rms and slt) plus
|
||
|
|
the kal diphone database
|
||
|
|
o CMULEX now uses maximum onset for syllabification
|
||
|
|
o alsa support
|
||
|
|
o Clustergen support (including mlpg with mixed excitation)
|
||
|
|
But is still slow on limited processors
|
||
|
|
o Windows support with Visual Studio (specifically for the Olympus
|
||
|
|
Spoken Dialog System)
|
||
|
|
o WinCE support is redone with cegcc/mingw32ce with example
|
||
|
|
example TTS app: Fluwm: Flite on Windows Mobile
|
||
|
|
o Speed-ups in feature interpretation limiting calls to alloc
|
||
|
|
o Speed-ups (and fixes) for converting clunits festvox voices
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
New in 1.3-release (October 2005)
|
||
|
|
o fixes to lpc residual extraction to give better quality output
|
||
|
|
o An updated lexicon (festlex_CMU from festival-2.0) and better
|
||
|
|
compression its about 30% of the previous size, with about
|
||
|
|
the same accuracy
|
||
|
|
o Fairly substantial code movements to better support PalmOS and
|
||
|
|
multi-platform cross compilation builds
|
||
|
|
o A PalmOS 5.0 port with an small example talking app ("flop")
|
||
|
|
o runs under ix86_64 linux
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
New in 1.2-release (February 2003)
|
||
|
|
o A build process for diphone and clunits/ldom voices
|
||
|
|
FestVox voices can be converted (sometimes) automatically
|
||
|
|
o Various bug fixes
|
||
|
|
o Initial support for Mac OS X (not talking to audio device yet)
|
||
|
|
but compiles and runs
|
||
|
|
o Text files can be synthesize to a single audio file
|
||
|
|
o (optional) shared library support (Linux)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Compilation
|
||
|
|
-----------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In general
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
tar zxvf flite-1.4-release.tar.gz
|
||
|
|
cd flite-1.4-release
|
||
|
|
./configure
|
||
|
|
make
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Where tar is gnu tar (gtar), and make is gnu make (gmake).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Configuration should be automatic, but maybe doesn't work in all cases
|
||
|
|
especially if you have some new compiler. You can explicitly set to
|
||
|
|
compiler in config/config and add any options you see fit. Configure
|
||
|
|
tries to guess these but it might be able for cross compilation cases
|
||
|
|
Interesting options there are
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
-DWORDS_BIGENDIAN=1 for bigendian machines (e.g. Sparc, M68x)
|
||
|
|
-DNO_UNION_INITIALIZATION=1 For compilers without C 99 union inintialization
|
||
|
|
-DCST_AUDIO_NONE if you don't need/want audio support
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
There are different sets of voices and languages you can select between
|
||
|
|
them (and your own sets if you make config/XXX.lv). For example
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./configure --with-langvox=transtac
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Will use the languages and voices defined in config/transtac.lv
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Usage:
|
||
|
|
------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The ./bin/flite voices contains all supported voices and you may
|
||
|
|
choose between the voices with the -voice flag and list the supported
|
||
|
|
voices with the -lw flag. Note the kal (diphone) voice is a different
|
||
|
|
technology from the others and is much less computationally expensive
|
||
|
|
but more robotic. For each voice additional binaries that contain
|
||
|
|
only that voice are created in ./bin/flite_FULLVOICENAME,
|
||
|
|
e.g. ./bin/flite_cmu_us_awb.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
If it compiles properly a binary will be put in bin/, note by
|
||
|
|
default -g is on so it will be bigger than is actually required
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite "Flite is a small fast run-time synthesis engine" flite.wav
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Will produce an 8KHz riff headered waveform file (riff is Microsoft's
|
||
|
|
wave format often called .WAV).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite doc/alice
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Will play the text file doc/alice. If the first argument contains
|
||
|
|
a space it is treated as text otherwise it is treated as a filename.
|
||
|
|
If a second argument is given a waveform file is written to it,
|
||
|
|
if no argument is given or "play" is given it will attempt to
|
||
|
|
write directly to the audio device (if supported). if "none"
|
||
|
|
is given the audio is simply thrown away (used for benchmarking).
|
||
|
|
Explicit options are also available.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite -v doc/alice none
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Will synthesize the file without playing the audio and give a summary
|
||
|
|
of the speed.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite doc/alice alice.wav
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
will synthesize the whole of alice into a single file (previoous
|
||
|
|
versions would only give the last utterance in the file, but
|
||
|
|
that is fixed now).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
An additional set of feature setting options are available, these are
|
||
|
|
*debug* options, Voices are represented as sets of feature values (see
|
||
|
|
lang/cmu_us_kal/cmu_us_kal.c) and you can override values on the
|
||
|
|
command line. This can stop flite from working if malicious values
|
||
|
|
are set and therefor this facility is not intended to be made
|
||
|
|
available for standard users. But these are useful for
|
||
|
|
debugging. Some typical examples are
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite --sets join_type=simple_join doc/intro
|
||
|
|
Use simple concatenation of diphones without prosodic modification
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite -pw doc/alice
|
||
|
|
Print sentences as they are said
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite --setf duration_stretch=1.5 doc/alice
|
||
|
|
Make it speak slower
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite --setf int_f0_target_mean=145 doc/alice
|
||
|
|
Make it speak higher
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The talking clock is an example talking clode as discussed on
|
||
|
|
http://festvox.org/ldom it requires a single argument HH:MM
|
||
|
|
under Unix you can call it
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite_time `date +%H:%M`
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite -lv
|
||
|
|
List the voices available in this build
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite -voice rms -f doc/alice
|
||
|
|
Speak with the US male rms voice
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite -voice awb -f doc/alice
|
||
|
|
Speak with the "Scottish" male awb voice
|
||
|
|
./bin/flite -voice slt -f doc/alice
|
||
|
|
Speak with the US female slt voice
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Voice quality
|
||
|
|
-------------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
So you've eagerly downloaded flite, compiled it and run it, now you
|
||
|
|
are disappointed that is doesn't sound wonderful, sure its fast and
|
||
|
|
small but what you really hoped for was the dulcit tones of a deep
|
||
|
|
baritone voice that would make you desperately hang on every phrase it
|
||
|
|
sang. But instead you get an 8Khz diphone voice that sounds like it
|
||
|
|
came from the last millenium.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Well, first, you are right, it is an 8KHz diphone voice from the last
|
||
|
|
millenium, and that was actually deliberate. As we developed flite we
|
||
|
|
wanted a voice that was stable and that we could directly compare with
|
||
|
|
that very same voice in Festival. Flite is an *engine*. We want to
|
||
|
|
be able take voices built with the FestVox process and compile them
|
||
|
|
for flite, the result should be exactly the same quality (though of
|
||
|
|
course trading the size for quality in flite is also an option). The
|
||
|
|
included voice is just an sample voice that was used in the testing
|
||
|
|
process. We have better voices in Festival and are working on the
|
||
|
|
coversion process to make it both more automatic and more robust and
|
||
|
|
tunable, but we haven't done that yet, so in this first beta release.
|
||
|
|
This old poor sounding voice is all we have, sorry, we'll provide you
|
||
|
|
with free, high-quality, scalable, configurable, natural sounding
|
||
|
|
voices for flite, in all languages and dialects, with the tools to
|
||
|
|
built new voices efficiently and robustly as soon as we can. Though
|
||
|
|
in the mean time, a few higher quality voices will be released with
|
||
|
|
the next version.
|
||
|
|
|