[Freeswitch-users] text to speech IVRs and MOH

[David Knell]

Just to add one:

Cepstral - quite a lot cheaper than the non-free ones Pete mentioned;
voice quality quite adequate for what we want it for, which is short
prompts and development.  Not tried it for reading e-mail or the like.
FS' mod_cepstral isn't wholly compatible with their 5.x release (unless
someone's fixed it), but that's easily worked around.

--Dave

> I've spent the last 2-3 months on researching TTS and ASR for FS for a
> project.  Best TTS depends on what you consider important.  Also, how
> do you plan on using it.
> 
> 
> Here's some of the TTS engines I've run across with some pros/cons:
> 
> 
> Festivate Lite (flite)
> Pros:
> - Free (comes with FS)
> - simple to use
> - 16K voice sounds decent
> - Completely customizable
> Cons:
> - 8K voice sounds horrible over cell phone
> 
> 
> NeoSpeech (VoiceWare) (around $300/port for 1 voice + $75 each addl
> voice)
> Pros:
> - My selection for best soundig voices
> - Recently select by Stephen Hawkings for his voice (geek points!)
> - Lots of Languages supported
> - Free trial available
> Cons:
> - Custom C-Based API (FS interface coming soon)
> - Large file size (Engine + SDK + 1 Voice = 900MB)
> - Support is lacking (Company beed in Korean, time zone issues, etc)
> 
> 
> Nuance ($500/port for 1 voice)
> Pros:
> - Wide Variety of Products
> - Support MRCP
> - Supports ASR as well (add'l fees)
> - Excellent support
> - Free trial
> - Decent sounding voices at 8K and 16K
> - Wide range of tuning parameters
> Cons:
> - Pricey
> - Limited voice selection
> - Limited support for 64-bit linux
> 
> 
> AT&T (NaturalVoice) (no pricing info available)
> Pros:
> - Big company (solid in marketplace)
> - Good suppport (user and developer)
> - ASP model means no software to maintain
> Cons:
> - ASP model incurs delay
> - Voices sound too digitized
> - Limited support for 64-bit linux
> 
> 
> 
> Loquendo ($500/port for 1 voice + 15% addl voice)
> Pros:
> - Good sounding voices (almost as good as NeoSpeech)
> - Wide variety of languages
> - Excellent support
> - Has free 30 day trial
> - Supports MRCP
> - Support ASR and Voice Recognition as well. (add'l fees)
> - Small footprint (< 150MB)
> Cons:
> - Pricey
> - Complicated install process
> - Limited management/tuning capabilities
> 
> 
> In the end, it was down to NeoSpeech or Loquendo for our application.
>  We are currently running tests with NeoSpeech and assuming all goes
> well, we will select them.  Though don't let that color your opinion
> too much after several "focus groups" we discovered the most important
> element in the equation is does your customer/boss like the sound of
> the voices, and that is a completely subjective decision.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -pete
> 
> 
>         -------- Original Message --------
>         Subject: [Freeswitch-users] text to speech IVRs and MOH
>         From: Saeed Ahmad <saeedahmad1981 at gmail.com>
>         Date: Tue, May 19, 2009 12:40 am
>         To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
>         
>         Hi all,
>          
>         Could you guys recommend me any online text to speech IVR
>         software which works OK with FS. i am using AT&T site and for
>         some IVRs i get sample rate errors. Also some resource to
>         download more MOH wav files.
>         
>         Many thanks
>         
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-- 
David Knell, Director, 3C Limited
T: +44 20 3298 2000
E: dave at 3c.co.uk
W: http://www.3c.co.uk