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I'm trying to obtain a text-to-speech (TTS) program at as low a cost as possible. One I keep running across (which is free and unrestricted) is called Festival Speech Synthesis System. I tried to download it but was unsuccessful. The demos of the voices were decent. Could be better, but for free . . . Then there is a GUI called Carnival that works with Festival. I couldn't figure that out, either. If I can somehow get this stuff, I may still have a shot at using computer-synthesized speech for free, in order to create some audio books. Otherwise, the best I've found is Cepstral: 50 voices for a license fee of $1200, allowing commercial selling (mp3 and wav files). Their license was $200 till a year and a half ago. But that was for only one chosen voice.
Any help in downloading Festival and Carnival or suggestions / recommendations for free or inexpensive TTS programs (i.e., for commercial purposes, not just private use) would be most appreciated.
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9 comments:
Dave,
It looks like Festival is only available as source code. You would have to have a compiler in order to build it. If you've never done that before, or if you don't know what that means, you're probably better off finding something else. Sorry.
RdP
I don't have the time this moment, but I will try to compile everything and get it running. If I am able (which I should be), I can send it to you all set to go.
Fantastic, Shane! I'm extremely grateful. If you can do this, I'll send you a set of e-books or a paperback if you like. And I can send you audiobooks for free as I get them up and running. Whatever you like, as a small token of appreciation for your invaluable help . . .
Meanwhile I had a huge virus attack late last night. It's mostly under control now but I still have nuisances to overcome (Firefox browser, Windows Media Player, email, etc.).
Scary, virus attack. What's your virus program? Any idea of how it got past? I have AVG on my home network, but I am an interntet lightweight.
I have AVG as of today. It was Avast. Both free programs . . .
Actually, I found out today that I can get the license for $200 provided I sell CDs and don't offer downloading o the Internet. So it's quite do-able! The total cost would be $230-260. I have a program called text Aloud that switches text to mp3. May be also another $30 to buy a voice (not sure).
Any luck with that project, Shane?
The advantage there, if it works, would be the ability to offer the audiobooks on the Internet as well, which is a lot easier for me (no extra work, no postage, materials, time spent burning CDs, etc.).
Dave,
I've been working on it. Unfortunately, it's a little more complicated than compiling things from the internet often is. It's not a big deal, so much as it just takes longer for me to sort it all out.
The main thing that's taking the time is that I needed to download some stuff to proceed with the project (which I've got no problem with), but that this downloading is going *extremely* slowly. It's really a matter of how long it takes the stuff to download at this point.
Thanks so much. Let me know if you'd like one of my books, or the set of e-books, etc.. for all your help.
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