Festival 1.4.1 speech synthesis system

Festival offers a general framework for building speech
synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules.
As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs:
from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C++
library, from Java, and an Emacs interface. Festival is
multi-lingual (currently English (British and American), and
Spanish) though English is the most advanced. Other groups release
new languages for the system.

The system is written in C++ and uses the Edinburgh Speech Tools
Library for low level architecture and has a Scheme (SIOD) based
command interpreter for control. Documentation is given in the FSF
texinfo format which can generate, a printed manual, info files and
HTML.

Festival is free sorftware and is distributed under an X11-type
licence allowing unrestricted commercial and non-commercial use
alike.

This release offers minor bug fixes and new compiler support
over version 1.4.0 which was release in June 1999.

This distribution includes:

• Full English (British and American English) text to speech
• Full C++ source for modules, SIOD interpreter, and Scheme
  library
• Lexicon based on CMULEX and OALD (OALD is restricted to
  non-commercial use only)
• Edinburgh Speech Tools, low level C++ library
• British English Male (for residual LPC resynthesis 8k and 16k
  versions)
• 2 American English Male (for residual LPC resynthesis 8k and
  16k versions)
• 4 other voices using MBROLA based diphone synthesis (1 British
  Male, 2 American Males and 1 American Female).
• Castilian Spanish Male (for residual LPC resynthesis 11k
  version)
• British English Male (for spike excited LPC resynthesis 10k
  version)
• Full documentation (html, postscript and GNU info format)

Festival version 1.4.1 sources, voices, and Linux binaries are
available from

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/download.html

and also from the US mirror at CMU

http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/festival/download.html

The Festival home page, offering descriptions of the system,
examples and online demos, can be found at

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival.html

Requirements

To run Festival you need:

• A Unix machine, Festival has compiled and run on Suns (SunOS
  and Solaris), FreeBSD, Linux, SGIs and DEC Alphas but should be
  portable to any standard Unix machine.
• A C++ compiler: we have used GCC version 2.7.2, 2.8.1, 2.95.1
  SunCC 4.1 and 4.2, and egcs. Other C++ compilers are probably
  possible with perhaps some minor chanages
• GNU Make any recent version
• Audio hardware, /dev/audio (8 bit and 16 bit on Suns, Linux and
  FreeBSD) and NCD’s NAS network transparent audio system are
  supported directly but Festival supports the execution of any Unix
  command that can play audio files.

There is also support for building the system under Windows NT
and 95/98. We have successfully ran the system complied with
Cygnus’ GNU win32 package and Microsoft’s Visual C++, instructions
are included

We intend to distribute binary distributions for major
architectures particularly Linux and Solaris. We will *not*
distribute binary versions for Windows NT/95 as we do not have
enough expertise to support them.

New in 1.4.1 version

• many small bug fixes
• SSFF track support (for emulabel)
• updated support for gcc-2.95.(12], gcc-2.7.2.[23], and AIX
• Support for new JDKs

—
Alan, Rob, Richard and Paul
30th November 1999