I don't understand this Stanza feature

daffy4u · 09-02-2008, 06:06 PM

At the bottom of the Stanza home page.

Quote:

Last, but not least, Stanza has an experimental new feature that allows you to export your books to MP3 audiobooks. Your entire audiobook can then be added to iTunes and synchronized with your iPod or other digital music player. This technology enables the blind and visually impaired to enjoy a wealth of electronic documents.

I know I could write the Stanza folks and ask but I'd rather bug *you*... so there!

Does this mean there is some kind of text to speech software in Stanza?

daffy4u · 09-02-2008, 06:15 PM

It looks like they do have text to speech but not for the Windows version.

Quote:

Exporting to an Audio Book is not supported.

HarryT · 09-03-2008, 03:07 AM

"Machine generated" speech is pretty dire for audio books; I can't listen to it.

igorsk · 09-03-2008, 07:50 AM

One guy made a program for reading subtitles using Microsofr TTS engine. He named it "The Creepy Voice"

HarryT · 09-03-2008, 08:06 AM

There are programs these days which do pretty good "voices", such as "TextAloud" (which has a whole array of different voices available in different accents - British, American, Australian, Indian, etc). It's not the voices which make it "unlistenable" for me, but the completely unnatural "intonation". They either speak the text completely "flat" or, even worse, they put intonation and stress in the wrong places.

igorsk · 09-03-2008, 08:21 AM

Reading is fine and good, but can it do singing?

zelda_pinwheel · 09-03-2008, 08:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by igorsk

Reading is fine and good, but can it do singing?

igorsk, do you mean that video is of a machine voice singing ? or is it someone using a vocoder to sound like a machine ?

HarryT · 09-03-2008, 08:40 AM

For choral music, there are programs around these days which can do an absolutely astonishingly good job of "synthesising" it. Not just the "oooooh" and "aaaaah" sounds that the early synthesisers had, but ones which will actually sing words.

igorsk · 09-03-2008, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

igorsk, do you mean that video is of a machine voice singing ? or is it someone using a vocoder to sound like a machine ?

The voice is synthesized. See here.

zelda_pinwheel · 09-03-2008, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by igorsk

The voice is synthesized. See here.

that's quite impressive. i hadn't realized they had made so much progress with synthesized voices.

igorsk · 09-03-2008, 10:10 AM

Well, this program is rather like an instrument: you can learn to poke some keys and play simple melodies which will sound like crap or you can master it and make it sound very good. Some people just type in the lyrics and use default settings - those usually don't sound too good.
The guy who made the song I linked (kz/livetune) has released a CD with Miku Hatsune songs on a major Japanese label last week, and it even made #5 on the weekly Oricon album chart.

zelda_pinwheel · 09-03-2008, 10:16 AM

wow. that's crazy.

badgoodDeb · 09-03-2008, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daffy4u

At the bottom of the Stanza home page.

I know I could write the Stanza folks and ask but I'd rather bug *you*... so there!

Does this mean there is some kind of text to speech software in Stanza?

I imagine it is using the text-to-speech software in the Mac. Except that it doesn't seem to work yet. I'll have to send the bug message to them, just in case it is *supposed* to be in working order. I was going to create a short sample and post it, so you could see how good/bad it might be to listen to. But, alas, I cannot get it to work.

badgoodDeb · 09-03-2008, 02:09 PM

Ahhh. I tried the command manually, and found that the error was: my mac doesn't have the voice Alex that they requested. So I took a text file and ran "say" on it with the default voice. It *is* pretty hard to listen to!! Since the whole thing is too large to upload (and too hard to listen to, anyway) I re-ran the "say" program on just the first 3 paragraphs. I'll include the whole text file, in case you want to know how the short story turns out!

daffy4u · 09-03-2008, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Ahhh. I tried the command manually, and found that the error was: my mac doesn't have the voice Alex that they requested. So I took a text file and ran "say" on it with the default voice. It *is* pretty hard to listen to!! Since the whole thing is too large to upload (and too hard to listen to, anyway) I re-ran the "say" program on just the first 3 paragraphs. I'll include the whole text file, in case you want to know how the short story turns out!

Wow! Thanks for trying this. It was actually a bit better than I expected and I'm not sure if it is due to the female voice used (reminds me of my GPS

). I'm so used to the "Stephen Hawkings" male voice for these things.

If I closed my eyes to listen, some parts were hard to follow but I think I could get accustomed, kind of like getting used to a thick accent.

Very interesting. It will be fun to see where technology goes with this in the next 5-10 years.

Thanks again!

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09-03-2008, 03:07 AM	#3
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	"Machine generated" speech is pretty dire for audio books; I can't listen to it.

09-03-2008, 07:50 AM	#4
igorsk Wizard Posts: 3,442 Karma: 300001 Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Belgium Device: PRS-500/505/700, Kindle, Cybook Gen3, Words Gear	One guy made a program for reading subtitles using Microsofr TTS engine. He named it "The Creepy Voice"

09-03-2008, 08:06 AM	#5
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	There are programs these days which do pretty good "voices", such as "TextAloud" (which has a whole array of different voices available in different accents - British, American, Australian, Indian, etc). It's not the voices which make it "unlistenable" for me, but the completely unnatural "intonation". They either speak the text completely "flat" or, even worse, they put intonation and stress in the wrong places.

09-03-2008, 08:21 AM	#6
igorsk Wizard Posts: 3,442 Karma: 300001 Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Belgium Device: PRS-500/505/700, Kindle, Cybook Gen3, Words Gear	Reading is fine and good, but can it do singing?

09-03-2008, 08:40 AM	#8
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	For choral music, there are programs around these days which can do an absolutely astonishingly good job of "synthesising" it. Not just the "oooooh" and "aaaaah" sounds that the early synthesisers had, but ones which will actually sing words.

09-03-2008, 10:10 AM	#11
igorsk Wizard Posts: 3,442 Karma: 300001 Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Belgium Device: PRS-500/505/700, Kindle, Cybook Gen3, Words Gear	Well, this program is rather like an instrument: you can learn to poke some keys and play simple melodies which will sound like crap or you can master it and make it sound very good. Some people just type in the lyrics and use default settings - those usually don't sound too good. The guy who made the song I linked (kz/livetune) has released a CD with Miku Hatsune songs on a major Japanese label last week, and it even made #5 on the weekly Oricon album chart.

09-03-2008, 10:16 AM	#12
zelda_pinwheel zeldinha zippy zeldissima Posts: 27,827 Karma: 921169 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Paris, France Device: eb1150 & is that a nook in her pocket, or she just happy to see you?	wow. that's crazy.