asterisk users - Sep 2007 - swift.conf - cepstral voice quality adjustment options

Hi all,



I hope that I'm not breaking protocol too much by posting a message in this
group about a problem that I'm having with an Asterisk Business Edition
installation, but the reason that I'm posting here is because the problem
that I'm having isn't really with the Business Edition, it is with the
Cepstral text to speech product that I'm using with it, and also because
this
group has so much more activity that I'm really hoping that somewhere in
this great Asterisk community there are some clever people who might have
some good suggestions to help me improve the voice quality on this system.



I have a phone switch configured with Asterisk Business Edition (B.2.3-2-1)
and I have installed a single license for the Cepstral voice, Callie.  I am
using the Swift application call within the asterisk dialplan:

      Within /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf --

      exten => s,n,Swift(Callie^Hello this is a cepstral voice named
Callie.)



And the php class phpAGI2, for interfacing with the Asterisk Gateway
Interface:

      Within /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/lookupAgency.php --

      $agi->swift('The agency nearest to your store is
'.$agency_name);



Both of these calls use the Callie voice and translate the text into speech,
but the voice quality seems to be less than ideal.  The voice sounds much
more 'robotic' than the demonstration on the Cepsral site, and the
pronunciation is noticeably slurred in areas.  I have looked and looked all
over to try and find documentation on how I can make any improvements to the
voice quality.  I have contacted Digium and Cepstral, but neither had much
to offer in the way of support.  I have googled and googled, but I can't
seem to find anything that helps.  I see that there is a file called
'/etc/asterisk/swift.conf' but all that is in it is the single entry:

      [general]

      voice=Callie            ; the name of the Cepstral voice



I'm wondering if there are other swift.conf entries that I might be able to
use to help improve the voice quality?  Command line options??  Or, maybe
there are other options available??  I am open to anything that might help.



Anyone who is interested in hearing the quality can call in and hear it at
865-288-6300.  This is an IVR system that will be rolled out to support
World Hunger Week.  Stores will begin calling in during the week of October
1st, so we are very near the roll out date.



I have not yet purchased the concurrency license from Cepstral because of
the voice quality concerns.  So if more than one call is received
simultaneously right now, all but the first will hear a licensing alert
along with the scripted text.



Any help or suggestions as to what I can do to improve the voice quality is
greatly appreciated.


Sincerely,
Larry Costigan
Food Donation Connection
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On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 10:57 -0400, Larry Costigan wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>  
> 
> I hope that I'm not breaking protocol too much by posting a message in
> this group about a problem that I'm having with an Asterisk Business
> Edition installation, but the reason that I'm posting here is
> because the problem that I'm having isn't really with the Business
> Edition, it is with the Cepstral text to speech product that I'm using
> with it, and also because this group has so much more activity that
> I'm really hoping that somewhere in this great Asterisk community
> there are some clever people who might have some good suggestions to
> help me improve the voice quality on this system.
> 
SNIP 



Here is a link that provides a snippet of info for you. 

http://www.mezzo.net/asterisk/app_swift.html

I would think that the buffer setting might be of importance!


dave

There have been a number of instances where "recent" changes in the *
code have led to a degradation of TTS in the 1.4 releases. I have no
idea whether this is relevant to ABE in general or the version you're
running. However, for a number of us the fix was to edit app_swift.c
(version 2.0rc1 from http://www.mezzo.net/asterisk/app_swift.html) and
change the line
   const int framesize = 160 * 2;   (I *think* that's what it was
originally)
to
   const int framesize = 20;

Recompile app_swift, reload and all was good :) Then again, this may
have no relevance to ABE.