PhatVoice User`s Guide
Contents
1. The first is that it will only be applied once per line so if you had a playlist named Yellow Yellow you would end up with Green Yellow To correct this we will make this substitution a global substitution by adding the letter g for global to the end of the command The second problem is that this will change all instances of Yellow So if you had an item named Yellowman it would be changed to Greenman To avoid this use the 16 option at the end of the what we have string like this s Yellow b Green g Customizing Pronunciations This will force the substitution to only apply where there is a word boundary b for boundar In other cases you will have a large amount of text in the what we have side which you d need to copy to the what we want side Instead of re typing the text we can use the parenthesis grouping operators to identify text we will then refer to in the what we want side as 1 For example s Einsturzende Neubauten lt voice required name Klaral6 gt 1 lt voice gt Instead of typing Einsturzende Neubauten over again we just enclose it in parenthesis on the left side and refer to it as 1 on the right side You can use more advanced regular expressions to save you the effort of repeatedly coding a particular hint for slightly different instances For example to change the pronunciation of occurrences of a word boundary followed by 4 digits fol2. a complete phonetic representation of a phrase complete with additional hints for emphasis and pacing You can also rearrange text elements such as changing Sample Album The into The Sample Album or generating different speech such as changing Demonstration Album CD 1 into Demonstration Album Disc 1 4 1 The pronunciation hints file The pronunciation hints are entered into a plain text file which you can edit with an editor of your choice A sample hints file called subs txt is supplied with PhatVoice You can either add your additional pronunciations to this file or create an entirely new file The syntax used for the hints file consists of regular expressions embedded in Perl substitutions If you don t know what that means don t panic for most uses this is pretty simple We only mention this here so if you are interested in advanced usage you can locate additional information 4 1 1 Substitutions and regular expressions In all of these substitutions case matters The is not the same as the The basic substitution is performed with the s substitute command If we wanted to change all instances of Yellow to Green we would say s Yellow Green in our pronunciation hints file Note that the hint begins with the letter s for substitute The characters for what we have and what we want are each enclosed in braces However there are two problems with this substitution
3. in Version 2 0 beta and subsequent Status resolved Summary PhatVoice doesn t generate speech for playlists Description The Playlist checkbox is grayed out This isn t a problem for V1 0 as it doesn t do pronunciation hints but it is vital for V2 0 as the major purpose of the new version is to generate hinted pronunciations Defect Enhancement ID D E 0012 Affected Version s 1 0 Fixed in Version 2 0 alpha and subsequent Status resolved Summary PhatVoice lacks support for pronunciation hints Description The ATT Natural Voices product does an amazing job with most text but it needs assistance with some pronunciations PhatVoice should support a regular expression based substitution engine which also allows the MS SAPI 5 tags for phonetic hints Defect Enhancement ID D E 0013 Affected Version s 1 0 and subsequent Fixed in Version 2 0 beta Status resolved Summary PhatVoice needs more info in its About PhatVoice dialog box Description PhatVoice should have more complete version and contact info in its About box Defect Enhancement ID D E 0015 Affected Version s 2 0 alpha and subsequent Fixed in Version 2 0 Status resolved Summary Speak error alert box should say what text was being spoken Description When the post regular expression processing speech is being generated it is possible for the Natural Voices engine to report a fail ure to generated speech for a number of reasons inclu
4. perfected the speech you may enter it in your hints file using a text editor as described in the previous chapter Axl Edit Entry word Apocalyptica T Phonemes faep2 axkaxOlihp1tihOk ae 2 Part of Speech none Language Jen_us Save Reset Cancel Sounds Like Use this area to try out different pronunciations When you are happy with the results copy and paste the phonemes into the Phonemes box in the Edit Entry area Sounds Like fa pocka lip tick a Phonemes Jaxpaa1k ax Olinptink ey 1 Customizing Pronunciations Note As of this writing the PhatVoice Music Manager ships with Version 1 2 1 of Natural Voices which does not include the Dictionary Editor utility You would need to purchase and install a newer version of Natural Voices as described above in order to obtain this utility Note The Dictionary Editor generates phonetic data based on the DARPA phonetic alphabet which is similar but not identical to the SAPI phonetic alphabet used by the Microsoft Speech and PhatVoice software When copying phonetic pronunciations from the Dictionary Editor you will need to remove all instances of the digit zero 0 and convert all instances of hh to h 4 2 4 Generating debugging output to to verify pronunciations Note This reference to debugging output refers to debugging your pronunciation hints not debugging the PhatVoice program itself One problem with using regu
5. to edit the phatbox ini file on your DMS This file is found in the root directory of the PHTSYS partition The following examples all assume that your computer mounts PHTSYS as drive G if your computer uses a different drive letter substitute it accordingly in each example First make a backup copy of your existing phatbox ini file in case anything goes wrong G copy phatbox ini phatbox ini save Next open the phatbox ini file in Notepad Search for the section for your particular car it will be inside sguare brackets In this example we will be making the change for a Toyota PhatBox Scroll down a bit and you will see a number of fields labeled audioid 3 Installing PhatVoice Note Note 2 6 Toyota auto_pong on sync_after_announce on audioid 2 6 WAIT 3 audioid 2 7 END audioid 3 0 dos tts beep3 wav audioid 3 1 CURMODE audioid 3 2 PLAYLIST audioid 3 3 ARTIST audioid 3 4 ALBUM audioid 3 5 GENRE You will be changing the audioid 3 tags First decide what you want your PhatBox to say The default is Playlist Artist Album Genre You can change these to add remove or rearrange the items that are spoken when a track is announced Personally I use O dos tts beep3 wav 15TITLE Z ARTIST 3 ALBUM audioid 3 audioid 3 audioid 3 audioid 3 Here I have added the TITLE keyword to speak the song title You can use any set of keywords in your configuration Experiment until you find a comb
6. use the additional Natural Voices you must be running Version 1 4 or later of the Natural Voices If you purchase the Version 1 4 engine you should first deinstall the 1 2 engine using the Windows Start Settings Control Panel Add Remove Programs menu 4 5 Customizing Pronunciations 4 2 Testing your pronunciations Note Depending on which additional software packages you have installed on your computer you will be able to test your pronunciations with one or more utilities If you have only installed the PhatNoise Music Manager and PhatVoice you will need to test using PhatVoice If you have installed the Microsoft Speech SDK 5 1 you may also use the TTSApp exe program included in that SDK If you purchased and installed Natural Voices version 1 3 or newer you may use the WinDictEdit exe program In each of the examples below we will show the process used to refine the pronunciation of the word Apocalyptica As noted in the previous chapter the Microsoft Speech API does not do a good job of converting the sample rate of speech generated by the Natural Voices engine If you are using either PhatVoice or the Microsoft Speech TTSApp to test your hints you should make sure that the speech format in the application is set to the native mode for the Natural Voices engine you are using 8KHz 16 Bit Mono for voices that do not end in 16 and 16KHz 16 bit Mono for voices ending in 16 If you have included a phonetic pronunciatio
7. 1 4 2 2 Testing hints using the Microsoft Speech engine The Microsoft Speech TTSapp program operates in a manner similar to the PhatVoice program except that it does not process your input through your hints file Start this program via Start Programs Microsoft Speech SDK 5 1 Tools TTSApp You need to have the Process XML box checked if you plan on including phonetic pronunciation or other SAPI hints in your text Once you have perfected the speech you may enter it in your hints file using a text editor as described in the previous chapter 4 7 4 2 3 Customizing Pronunciations we SAPIS TTSAPP al Ix co So O B oo Mouth Position Open File Speak Pause Stop Speak wav Voice ATT DTN 1 4 MikelG Kate Reset Save to wavy PERSE ELE Volume T Show all events W Process XML Format 16kHz 16 Bit Mono About Testing hints using the AT amp T Natural Voices engine Natural Voices 1 3 and later provides a Dictionary Editor utility to enter pronunciations into a custom dictionary While neither the PhatNoise Music Manager nor PhatVoice use custom dictionaries this utility has a very nice feature which will show you the phonetic representation of words you type in and also has a Sounds Like box to let you explore the phonetic spelling of similar words Consult the Natural Voices documentation for additional information on using this program Again once you have
8. 1 2 The phonetic alphabet and other engine hints 4 2 4 1 3 Some useful things to know about Natural Voices 4 4 4 1 4 Obtaining additional Natural Voices 4 5 4 2 TESTING YOUR PRONUNCIATIONS 4 6 4 2 1 Testing hints using PhatVoice 4 6 4 2 2 Testing hints using the Microsoft Speech engine 4 7 4 2 3 Testing hints using the AT amp T Natural Voices engine 4 8 4 2 4 Generating debugging output to to verify pronunciations 4 9 CHAPTER 5 UNINSTALLING PHATVOICE 5 1 5 1 UNINSTALLING USING THE UNINSTALL PHATVOICE START MENU ITEM 5 1 5 2 MANUALLY UNINSTALLING PHATVOICE 5 1 CHAPTER 6 CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS CORRECTED PROBLEMS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS 6 1 6 1 CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS 6 1 6 2 CORRECTED PROBLEMS 6 1 6 3 KNOWN PROBLEMS 6 3 Contents CHAPTER 7 REBUILDING PHATVOICE FROM SOURCE 7 1 7 1 OTHER NEEDED SOFTWARE AND PREREQUISITES 7 1 7 2 STEPS NEEDED FOR REBUILDING 7 1 TABLES 4 1 The SAPI 5 US English Phonetic Alphabet _ CS lt O 4 3 Preface This guide explains how to install and use the PhatVoice text to speech utility Intended Audience This manual is intended for all PhatVoice users It describes the operation of the PhatVoice utility as well as advanced options such as additional voices custom pronunciation and rebuilding PhatVoice from source It is expected that the user is already familiar with the installation and
9. Enter and Escape keys causes undesired PhatVoice exit Description If the user presses the Enter or Escape key PhatVoice will exit This is surprising to users and these keypresses should be ignored except for Enter within the Sample text box Changes from previous versions corrected problems and known problems 6 2 Defect Enhancement ID D E 0008 Affected Version s 1 0 through 2 0 alpha Fixed in Version 2 0 beta and subsequent Status resolved Summary PhatVoice lacks the Windows minimize window widget Description The PhatVoice application can t be minimized The only item on the top right of the PhatVoice window is the close X widget Defect Enhancement ID D E 0009 Affected Version s 1 0 through 2 0 alpha Fixed in Version 2 0 beta and subsequent Status resolved Summary PhatVoice lacks the ability to save user preferences Description There is no option to save the user s preferences There should be a Save Settings button Defect Enhancement ID D E 0010 Affected Version s All Fixed in Version 2 0 Status resolved Summary Sample text box doesn t support mouse based cut copy paste operations Description The Sample text input box doesn t support right click mouse cut copy and paste operations As a workaround use the keyboard accelerator keys Control I for cut Control C for copy and Control V for paste Defect Enhancement ID D E 0011 Affected Version s 1 0 through 2 0 alpha Fixed
10. N Speak error For lt pronsym 2 eh r hh ow s m ih th 2 Note The PhatNoise Music Manager sometimes re generates speech files when used to eject the DMS We recommend using the DMS Eject Utility found in the Start Programs PhatNoise Music Manager DMS Eject menu to eject the DMS after generating speech with PhatVoice 3 4 Running PhatVoice 3 2 Post processing the audio files Note The following is an advanced topic for users who have installed the 16KHz Natural Voices Most users including those who are using the Natural Voices supplied by PhatNoise on the PMM CD don t need to worry about this As mentioned above if you have the 16KHz Natural Voices the PhatBox cannot directly play the generated speech The obvious solution of generating the speech at a rate the PhatBox supports doesn t work well as the Microsoft Speech resampling introduces obvious artifacts in the speech The solution is to use an out board additional utility to convert the speech to a rate that the PhatBox will accept while controlling conversion artifacts If you will be re sampling your PhatVoice output we suggest you override the default output location normally the TTS directory of your DMS PHTDATA partition Instead put the output files on a scratch directory of your PC s hard disk and then have the resampling utility put its output files on the DMS or copy them there later manually We give examples using two different utilities
11. PhatVoice User s Guide October 2003 This manual describes the PhatVoice text to speech application for the PhatNoise Car Audio System Revision Update Information This is a new manual Operating System and Version Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition or later Software Version PhatVoice V2 0 Terry Kennedy http www tmk com PhatVoice 7 October 2003 Permission is granted to copy and redistribute this document and the accompanying software for non commercial purposes The information in this document is subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by the authors The authors assume no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document DISCLAIMER Use of this product involves making changes to the contents of the PhatNoise Car Audio System Such changes are made at the sole risk of the user and neither the authors nor PhatNoise Inc shall be liable for the results of such changes PhatVoice is a freeware programming project not associated with PhatNoise Inc The authors make no representations or warranties with respect to the contents or function of this documentation or software and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose The following are trademarks of PhatNoise Inc PhatNoise PhatBox PhatNoise Car Audio System SSA DMS PhatNoise Music Manager Natural Voices is a registered trademark of AT amp T Corpora
12. The PhatVoice developers have different opinions regarding the best way to accomplish the goal of replacing all output files Some feel that it is better to delete all the wav files in the TTS directory and let PhatVoice re generate them all without checking the Always Replace Output Files box while others feel that it is better to not delete the files manually and check the Always Replace Output Files box There is a performance advantage to manually deleting the output files this way PhatVoice will only generate each speech item once However there may be cases where PhatVoice would generate a different filename or omit a speech item that PMM generates which would then result in a missing announcement If the Always Replace Output Files box is checked PhatVoice will generate text for the selected speech items but will generate it multiple times for example each time a specific artist appears on the DMS that artist s name will be re generated In essence it is a time tradeoff if you have the time you should probably check Always Replace Output Files and let PhatVoice work for an extended period Running PhatVoice The center area of the screen contains items related to pronunciation hints Note Note Regexps checkbox and file selection button lets you enable when checked the processing of pronunciation hints Use the file selection button to choose a hints file Debug Output controls
13. This will install Phatwoice V2 0 on your computer Ibis recommended that you close all other applications before continuing Click Next to continue or Cancel to exit Setup i Cancel Installing PhatVoice 2 2 After you click the Next button you will be presented with the License Agreement screen Be sure to read the license agreement completely and make sure you understand and accept it before continuing f Setup Phat oice License Agreement Please read the following important information before continuing Please read the following License Agreement You must accept the terns of this agreement before continuing with the installation Copyright 2003 by Dylan Ginsburg Ben Cohen and Terry Kennedy All rights reserved Phaty oice is a freeware programming project not associated with Phat oise Inc Redistribution and use in source and binary forms with or without modification are permitted provided that the following conditions are met 1 Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice this list of conditions and the following disclaimer accept the agreement f do not accept the agreement Once you click on the Accept button and click the Next button you will see the Select Destination Directory dialog box The default location has been pre selected for you but you may choose any other directory if you prefer We strongly recommend that you install PhatVoice i
14. alling PhatVoice While we hope that PhatVoice has been useful to you we can understand that you might need to uninstall it for some reason This chapter documents the removal process 5 1 Uninstalling using the Uninstall PhatVoice Start Menu item If you installed PhatVoice using the Setup Wizard your Start Menu will have an item in the Windows Start Programs PhatVoice Uninstall PhatVoice which will perform an automated uninstall of PhatVoice Note that if you have created any additional files in the installation directory normally C Program Files PhatVoice those additional files and the PhatVoice directory itself will not be removed during the uninstall If you don t want to keep those files you may delete them and remove the directory yourself 5 2 Manually uninstalling PhatVoice If you manually installed PhatVoice from the zipfile you can delete the program and data files along with the installation directory as well as removing any Start Menu items and Desktop shortcuts 6 1 6 2 Changes from previous versions corrected problems and known problems This chapter lists changes made from previous versions as well as providing lists of corrected problems and known problems Changes from previous versions The main changes from PhatVoice V1 0 are e Support for pronunciation hints e Support for speech generation of playlist names e Various bugfixes Refer to the rest of this manual for more detail
15. bout Natural Voices 4 4 On the Natural Voices bulletin boards various people have discussed the theory behind the way Natural Voices generates speech The engine operates at the half phoneme level Each phoneme is split into two pieces by the engine and adjacent phonemes are evaluated to see which half phonemes would generate the best speech based on the engine s rules This normally works well but in some cases it produces incorrect pronunciations which can be nearly impossible to correct Consider the Mike16 voice trying to pronounce the phrase moonshine map The word moonshine alone is pronounced correctly but when you add the word map to the sentence you get myoonshine map Normally you would just convert this into its phonetic equivalent of m uw n 1 sh ay n 2 m ae p 1 and have it work but the Mike16 Natural Voice will evaluate these phonemes apply its rules and continue to say myoonshine map As one of the developers said in the Natural Voices discussion forum You can suggest what you want from the engine but there is no guarantee you will get it There are ways to control it but it s not always possible to get exactly what you want Customizing Pronunciations Additionally not all of the US English Natural voices will generate the same pronunciation from a given hint The Crystal16 voice has no problem with moonshine map This has the effect of making some pronuncia
16. ding the voice not being installed incorrect phoneme string for the selected voice and so forth It would help if PhatVoice would report what was being spoken in order to help the user track down the incorrect SAPI syntax Changes from previous versions corrected problems and known problems 6 3 Known problems The following problems are still present in the PhatVoice 2 0 release They may be corrected in a subseguent release Defect Enhancement ID D E 0001 Affected Version s 2 0 alpha and subsequent Fixed in Version Status open Summary Some syntax errors are ignored Description Some syntax errors are not detected when the regexp file is loaded by PhatVoice In particular errors of the form are not flagged as errors User feedback of any other cases would be appreciated Defect Enhancement ID D E 0002 Affected Version s All Fixed in Version Status open Summary Generated speech sounds Scratchy or is missing Description Choosing an incorrect text to speech bitrate or width can gen erate substandard speech or speech that does not play or makes screeching noises on the PhatBox There are actually two separate issues here 1 The MS Speech API introduces resampling errors at bitrates other than the native Natural Voices rates 16KHz for voices ending in 16 otherwise 8Khz 2 The PhatBox can only play 16 bit files at 8KHz 11KHz 22KHz and 44KHz newer versions can also play 8 bit files So if
17. don t want to clutter your desktop with another icon feel free to de select the checkbox here fe Setup Phat oice Select Additional T asks Which additional tasks should be performed Select the additional tasks you would like Setup to perform while installing Phatwoice then click Mest Additional icons Back Cancel After clicking the Next button you will now have a chance to review and change if you desire your installation options Installing PhatVoice fe Setup Phat oice H ioj xj Ready to Install Setup is now ready to begin installing Phatyoice on your computer Click Install to continue with the installation or click Back if you want to review or change any settings Destination directory C Program Files Phatyoice Start Menu folder Phatwoice Additional tasks Create a desktop icon r Cancel When you click on the Install button installation will proceed automatically fe Setup Phat oice E ioj xl Completing the Phatvoice Setup Wizard Setup has finished installing Fhatoice on pour computer The application may be launched by selecting the installed icons Click Finish to exit Setup At this point PhatVoice setup has been completed You have the option to run PhatVoice now or to exit the Setup Wizard without running PhatVoice at this time Click on the Finish button to exit the Setup Wizard At any time you can start PhatVoice from the Windo
18. e 3 disc 1 k ah ng f y uw 1 zh ax n gt Ninja Cuts Volume 3 disc 2 at the Knitting Factory Volumeume 1 at the Knitting Factory Volume 1 lt Best of Trance 2000 Volumeume 1 gt Best of Trance 2000 Volume 1 2158c2158 lt New Wave Hits of the 80 s Volumeume 9 gt New Wave Hits of the 80 s Volume 9 2237c2237 lt Ohm Lounge Volumeume 5 gt Ohm Lounge Volume 5 3319 3320c3319 3320 lt Trans Volumeume 2 A State of Altered Consciousness disc 1 lt Trans Volumeume 2 A State of Altered Consciousness disc 2 gt Trans Volume 2 A State of Altered Consciousness disc 1 gt Trans Volume 2 A State of Altered Consciousness disc 2 357603576 Yevgeniy Osin Tanya Volumeodya gt Yevgeniy Osin Tanya Volodya 0 3 host terry test gt T 2 Note Customizing Pronunciations After you have checked for unwanted substitutions you can either edit your pronunciation hints file if you found any problems or proceed to generate speech from your hints file as shown in the previous chapter Debug output is an alternative to generating the actual speech files If you have checked the Debug Output box speech files will not be generated Once you have verified the debug output re run the speech generation with Debug Output un checked to generate the actual speech files Be sure to check the Always Replace Output Files box to replace existing speech with the new files 4 11 5 Uninst
19. e and Crystal Natural Voices or any of the additional Natural Voices those voices are available to you in PhatVoice You may either change the default voice used for all speech or you may override the default voice for a particular item of speech This is useful if you have a number of albums with an artist album name or song title in a foreign language The US English Mike and Crystal Natural Voices tend to do poorly when pronouncing such items If you have a foreign language Natural Voice installed you can add a hint to have it switch when it encounters these items The sample hints file distributed with Phat Voice contains a number of these hints 1 2 Additional resources A number of additional resources are available to you There are discussion and annoucement only mailing lists for PhatVoice The discussion group is a user to user forum though the PhatVoice developers monitor it and respond to posts as well where users can share pronunciation hints tips and tricks ask questions and so forth The announcement list is used to inform users about updates to PhatVoice For more information visit http listserv tmk com archives The PhatVoice home page is located at http www tmk com PhatVoice You may download the latest version of PhatVoice as well as additional materials from the above page PhatNoise Inc maintains discussion forums at http www phatnoise com forum index php While PhatVoice is not affiliated wit
20. em DMS refers to the Digital Media Storage cartridge which can be inserted in either the PhatBox or the cradle cradle refers to the holder for the DMS which is attached to your PC PMM refers to the PhatNoise Music Manager a software component installed on your PC Natural Voices refers to the AT amp T Natural Voices software an optional component of the PhatNoise Music Manager Microsoft Speech refers to the Microsoft Speech software installed on your PC when you install the PhatNoise Music Manager Microsoft Speech SDK 5 1 refers to the expanded version of the Microsoft Speech software with additional tools and utilities available as a download from Microsoft vii 1 Introduction This chapter describes the PhatVoice package It includes an overview of PhatVoice as well as information on additional resources 1 1 Overview PhatVoice is a freeware add on to the PhatNoise system which improves on the speech generation capabilities of the PhatNoise Music Manager It does this in three ways e Using hints to improve the pronunciation of words e Generating speech for song titles e Utilizing additional Natural Voices if installed Each of these is discussed below 1 1 1 Using hints to improve pronunciation The PhatNoise Music Manager PMM generates speech based on the ID tags in MP3 files or from data entered by the user A common limitation of text to speech engines is that they are limited by their built in p
21. gexps box is checked Additionally if you click on the PhatVoice icon you can select About PhatVoice which will provide information about the version of PhatVoice in use as well as the copyright notice and additional information as shown here 3 3 Running PhatVoice About Phat oice xj Phatyoice Version 2 0 of 07 Oct 2003 amp Copyright 2003 Dylan Ginsburg Ben Cohen and Tere Kennedy Wait http aay tik com Phat oice for more info and updates Phatwoice is a freeware programming project not associated with Phathoise Inc Visit PhatMoise at http ww phatnoise coms This product incorporates ActrvePerl from ActyveState Corporation Commercial support for ActivePerl is available through ActiveState at http aw Actives tate com Support Enterprise For peer support resources for ActveP er issues see http Paw Act yes tate com Support 3 1 Generating speech Once you have selected your desired options as shown above you should click on the Go button to generate the speech files You will see each of the speech items as they are generated Generating files orn Slippy Album Wersion Cancel If any of the pronunciation hints cause the TTS engine to report an error for example if you specify a non existent phoneme PhatVoice will report the error showing the particular speech item which caused the error This will help you locate the error in your hints file Phat oice my xi A
22. h PhatNoise Inc it grew out of an idea first posted in one of those forums and notices of updates will be posted there as well 2 Installing PhatVoice This chapter provides information about the prerequisites for PhatVoice as well as detailed installation steps for both the setup based and zipfile based installation processes 2 1 Installation prerequisites You will need have either the PhatNoise Music Manager or the Microsoft Speech 5 1 SDK installed One of these is needed in order to provide the SAPI interface that PhatVoice uses Consult the Related Materials section of this manual for download locations for these software packages if you need to install them 2 2 Installing using the PhatVoice Setup Wizard Note The recommended installation method is to use the PhatVoice Setup Wizard This provides a Windows based setup which will install and configure PhatVoice for you Neither PhatVoice nor the Setup Wizard modify any registry keys or install any files outside of the user specified installation directory The only difference between the Setup Wizard and the zipfile based installation is that the Setup Wizard automates the process and creates Start Menu and optional Desktop shortcuts for you To launch the Setup Wizard simply select the PhatVoice_setup exe file from the Windows Start Run Browse menu This will launch the Setup Wizard as shown below fe Setup Phat oice Welcome to the Phatvoice Setup Wizard
23. ination your like The items will be announced in numerical order as shown in the above list When creating your list make sure it is in order and there are no gaps in the sequence You need to make this change on each of your DMS cartridges if you have more than one Some PhatBox models such as the Toyota example above have a CURMODE tag which generates the Now browsing message You can keep that keyword as item number 1 in the list and start your announcements at item 2 or you can remove it and start your announcements at item 1 The BMW part of the phatbox ini file is slightly scrambled in all of the ini files Pve seen audioid 2 5 TITLE audioid 2 6 PLAY audioid 3 0 dos tts beep3 wav audioid 3 1 PLAYLIST audioid 3 2 ARTIST audioid 3 3 ALBUM audioid 3 4 GENRE auto_pong on audioid 2 7 WAIT 5 audioid 2 8 END Don t worry about the pieces starting with auto_pong on being out of sequence just arrange the audioid 3 tags as you normally would Installing PhatVoice 2 4 3 Thetitle mp3 file As mentioned previously the PhatNoise system does not directly support track titles In addition to generating the track titles PhatVoice supplies a pair of speech file one of which says The current track is and the other which says Track both in the same voice as the rest of the PhatNoise announcements One of these files needs to be copied to a file called title mp3 in the TTS directory of the PHTSYS part
24. ition on your DMS Which one you use is a matter of personal preference The following examples assume that your computer mounts PHTSYS as drive G if your computer uses a different drive letter substitute it accordingly For The current track is copy C Program Files PhatVoice current_track mp3 G TTS title mp3 For Track copy C Program Files PhatVoice track mp3 G TTS title mp3 Again note that PHTSYS is the first of two drive letters on the DMS If you copy the title mp3 file to the PHTDATA partition it won t be used You need to make this change on each of your DMS cartridges if you have more than one 2 1 3 Running PhatVoice You may start PhatVoice from the Windows Start Menu normally Start Programs PhatVoice PhatVoice If you do not have a PhatNoise DMS on your system you will receive the following alert Phat oice E xi AN Unable to Find PhatNoise GMS If this occurs simply click on the Ok button if you only want to test pronunciations otherwise click on the Ok button and then exit PhatVoice insert your DMS and then restart PhatVoice Once PhatVoice starts you will see the following screen Phat oice Joj x FhatN oze OMS Database File H S artist db Output Directory HSTTSS Always Replace Output Files Files ta Generate Ke Playlist I Artist i Album i Track i Genre Ga Close Save Settings Test to Speech Proper
25. lar expression based substitutions is that your substitutions may act on text where you weren t expecting it to For example if you wanted to change all instances of Vol to Volume you might try a substitution of the form s Vol Volume However if you had a disc with info that said Volume already you would end up with Volumeume instead In order to assist you in locating these unintended consequences without having to listen to all of the generated speech debugging output is available To enable this output ensure that the Debug Output box is checked and that the Always Replace Output Files box is not checked You will probably want to have all of the Playlist Artist Album Track and Genre boxes checked Before loading your new substitutions file enter a filename such as old txt in the Debug Output filename chooser box and click the large Go button This will create a debug output file with the current substitutions if any Now load your new substitutions file using the Regexps filename chooser box and change your Debug Output filename to something like new txt and then click the Go button You now have two debug files named old txt and new txt which you can compare to locate any differences You can do this under Windows with the DOS fc command You can access the DOS environment in Windows by accessing the Start Run menu and typing command in the selection box Windows 2000 and newer users may also
26. lowed by a dash use s b d d d d lt context id date_year gt 1 lt gt g When you load a hints file either automatically as part of PhatVoice startup or via the Regexps file selection button the file is checked for proper syntax If there is an error in any of the hints you will receive an error message such as this Invalid Substitution i x oe Invalid substitution 41712 Hsevenbeen twelve Press CANCEL to terminate caca You may click Ok to ignore this error and continue loading the file or Cancel to exit PhatVoice For additional information on debugging your hints see Section 4 2 4 41 2 The phonetic alphabet and other engine hints 4 2 Both the Microsoft Speech engine and the Natural Voices engine use the SAPI phonetic alphabet to express speech in phonemes In cases where you cant generate the correct pronunciation using creative mis spelling of a word you will need to create a phonetic representation of the word or phrase Table 4 1 shows the SAPI phonetic alphabet for US English For other languages and dialects consult either the Microsoft Speech or Natural Voices documentation In addition to phonetic pronunciation there are a large number of other keywords you can use to control the engine In the example in the previous section we switched from the default voice to the Klara16 voice to pronounce a German phrase and then switched back to the default voice Again consult the Micros
27. n a directory by itself rather than placing it in a directory with other programs or files f Setup Phat oice Select Destination Directory Where should Phatwoice be installed Select the folder where you would like Phatwoice to be installed then click Next C Program File Phat oce ma Program Files Accessories Active SMART Adaptec Adobe AIMS American Power Conversion ga c office c The program requires at least 1 0 MB of disk space Back Cancel After you select a destination directory and click Next you may now select the Start Menu Folder location for the program Again the default location has been pre selected Likewise we strongly recommend that you place PhatVoice in its own folder Installing PhatVoice fa Setup Phat oice lol xl Select Start Menu Folder Where should Setup place the program s shortcuts Select the Start Menu folder in which you would like Setup to create the program s shortcuts then click Nest Accessones Active SMART Administrative Tools APC ComeT elnet APC Management Card Wizard BreezeBrowser CloneCD DESI Labeling Systern Dis DNS Expert Professional EOS LINK ES E1 ETY Television Guide eee Back Cancel Once you have chosen a Start Menu Folder click Next Now you have the choice of having an icon for PhatVoice placed on your Windows desktop The default is to perform this operation but if you
28. n or other SAPI markup tags in your text you may receive the message Speak error This means that an invalid tag or phoneme was detected in your text It is not always obvious what the incorrect tag is and you may have to resort to shortening your text to isolate the offending syntax 421 Testing hints using PhatVoice 4 6 To test hints using PhatVoice start the PhatVoice program normally via Start Programs PhatVoice PhatVoice and enter the text you want spoken in the Text to Speech box then click the Sample button to generate the speech If the Regexps box is checked the sample text will be processed through the currently loaded hints file displayed in the Post Regexp Processing box and spoken To refine your hint enter new text in the Text to Speech box and repeat Once you have the speech sounding the way you want it you may enter it in your hints file using a text editor as described in the previous chapter Customizing Pronunciations Phat oice f Ioj x FhatN oze OMS Database File H S artist db Output Directory JHSTTSS Always Replace Output Files Files to Generate Playlist Artist Album T Track O Genre Close Save Settings Test to Speech Properties IW Regexps subs txt m Debug Output 2 Voice ATT OTNY 1 4 MikelG Rate jM Volume Format 1EkHz 16 Bit Mono Apocalyptica Post Regexp Processing pron sym ax p aa kas lih p tih k ah
29. n substitutions Having an outboard Perl DLL means that a users have one more file to worry about and b might have an incompatible DLL on their system 6 3 Changes from previous versions corrected problems and known problems Defect Enhancement ID D E 0016 Affected Version s 2 0 alpha and subsequent Fixed in Version Status open Summary Need additional option for only generating hinted speech Description Instead of the current checkbox for Always Replace Output Files have 3 radio buttons Always Replace Output Files Only Replace Hinted Files and Never Replace Output Files This will let users rapidly re generate only the hinted speech if desired 7 Rebuilding PhatVoice from source In the unlikely event that you want to rebuild PhatVoice from the source code we have provided some information for you in this section Normally the way to make changes or add features is to request them from the PhatVoice developers but given that the way we got involved was by making changes to the original author s source we feel we should provide you with the same opportunity In any case we would like to remind you of your obligations under the PhatVoice license agreement and we request that if you make any changes that you send them to us as well so we can consider incorporate them in future versions of PhatVoice 7 1 Other needed software and prerequisites As a minimum you will need e Microsoft Visual C 6 0 Standa
30. oft Speech or Natural Voices documentation for a complete list of the available keywords If you install a version of PMM which includes Natural Voices the manual is available in Windows Customizing Pronunciations at Start Programs AT amp T Natural Voices 1 2 Desktop System Developer s Guide Table 4 1 Phoneme Symbol aa ae ah ao aw ax ay b ch d dh eh er ey f ng OW oy sh th uh uw Example Bob bat but bought down about bite bet church dig that bet bird bait fog got hot bit beat jump cat lot Mom nod sing boat boy pot rat sit shut top thick book boot The SAPI 5 US English Phonetic Alphabet Transcription baab 1 baet1 baht 1 b aot 1 dawn axbawt1 bayt1 beht 1 ch er ch 1 ding 1 dh aet 1 beht 1 berd1 beyt1 faog1 gaat1 haat1 biht 1 biyt 1 jh ah mp 1 k aet 1 laat 1 maam 1 naad 1 s ih ng 1 b ow t1 b oy 1 paati raet1 siht1 shaht1 taap1 th ih k 1 b uh k 1 b uw t 1 4 3 Customizing Pronunciations Table 4 1 Cont The SAPI 5 US English Phonetic Alphabet Phoneme Symbol Example Transcription vat vaet 1 won wahn 1 you y uw 1 N lt x s lt ZOO Z UW 1 zh measure meh 1 zher ah Primary stress 2 Secondary stress Syllable boundary amp word boundary Sentence terminator Sentence terminator Sentence terminator Sentence terminator Silence 41 3 Some useful things to know a
31. operation of the PhatNoise Car Audio System including the PhatNoise Music Manager PMM application Important Cautions Please remember that the PhatVoice software project is not affiliated with PhatNoise Inc makers of the PhatNoise Car Audio System Use of this product involves making changes to the contents of the PhatNoise Car Audio System Such changes are made at the sole risk of the user and neither the authors nor PhatNoise Inc shall be liable for the results of such changes Related Materials e PhatNoise Car Audio System User Manual http www phatnoise com downloads phatbox users manual pdf e PhatNoise SSA Voice Reference Card http www phatnoise com downloads SSA Glove Box Guide pdf e PhatNoise Music Manager Software http www phatnoise com downloads download sw php e Microsoft Speech SDK 5 1 for Windows Software http www microsoft com speech download sdk51 e AT amp T Natural Voices Software http naturalvoices att com buy index html e AT amp T Natural Voices Documentation http naturalvoices att com support documentation html vi Conventions Preface In this document the following conventions will be used to refer to the various components PhatVoice refers to PhatVoice the package described in this document PhatNoise refers to PhatNoise Inc who are not affiliated with this package in any way PhatBox refers to the actual car audio player device of the PhatNoise Car Audio Syst
32. rd Edition http msdn microsoft com visualc e ActiveState ActivePerl 5 6 1 build 635 http www activestate com Products Download Download plex id ActivePerl There are newer versions of both Visual C and ActivePerl which may work for rebuilding PhatVoice but these are the versions it was developed under and we suggest you use them 7 2 Steps needed for rebuilding Simply unzip the PhatVoice_source zip file into an empty directory be sure to select the Use folder names option or similar when extracting the source files Then load the PhatVoice workspace using Visual C s File Open Workspace menu item Use the Build Set Active Configuration menu item to select PhatVoice Win32 Release and then select Build Build PhatVoice exe to create the new executable It will be located in the Release subdirectory of your project directory Terminat hora diem terminat auctor opus 7 1
33. ronunciation rules Traditionally they do not do well with proper names among other things While Natural Voices represents a large improvement over prior TTS engines it can still generate speech that ranges from creatively mispronounced to what the heck did it say In some cases it is possible to edit the data in PMM to create better speech but this is not always possible Further it might be a repetitive task for example if you wanted to change all instances of CD 1 to Disc 1 PhatVoice lets you perform these substitutions in a simple manner without needing to manually edit each song in PMM In addition to changing the spelling of words you can also embed specific commands to the TTS engine such as phonetic pronunciation for a difficult word or adding removing emphasis on a word 1 1 2 Generating speech for song titles PMM does not currently generate speech for song track titles it is limited to artist album playlist and genre PhatVoice adds the ability to generate speech for track titles A minor change to a configuration file on the PhatNoise Digital Media Storage DMS cartridge and copying a new announcement file to the DMS need to be performed in order to take advantage of this feature These changes are documented in Section 2 4 of this manual 1 1 Introduction 11 3 Utilizing additional Natural Voices If you have purchased and installed either the 16KHz versions of the standard Mik
34. s on these changes Corrected problems The following problems have been corrected for the release of PhatVoice V2 0 Defect Enhancement ID D E 0003 Affected Version s 1 0 through 2 0 beta Fixed in Version 2 0 beta2 Status resolved Summary Incorrect output file names generated for items containing Description If a pronunciation item contains an exclamation point the generated filename is incorrect It is missing the character De pending on whether or not a file of the same name already exists on the DMS users will either hear silence or the previous file s contents Defect Enhancement ID D E 0004 Affected Version s 2 0 alpha 2 0 beta Fixed in Version 2 0 beta2 Status resolved Summary ia character in MP3 tag generates COM error Description If a MP3 tag artist title track etc contains a vertical bar when that track is processed by PhatVoice the user will receive the error COM Error 2147287038 1 could not be found Defect Enhancement ID D E 0006 Affected Version s 1 0 through 2 0 alpha Fixed in Version 2 0 beta and subsequent Status resolved Summary Enter key doesn t work in Sample text box Description PhatVoice should speak the Sample text if the Enter key is pressed while focus is in the Sample text box Defect Enhancement ID D E 0007 Affected Version s 1 0 through 2 0 alpha Fixed in Version 2 0 beta and subsequent Status resolved Summary
35. the generation and output filename for pronunciation debugging See Section 4 2 4 for additional information Voice selects which voice is used to generate the speech All installed voices will be shown in this listbox Rate controls the rate pacing of the generated speech Volume controls the volume of the generated speech Format selects the format characteristics of the generated speech The PhatBox only supports a subset of the rates listed in this box In particular only 8KHz 11KHz 22KHz and 44 1KHz all in 16 bit mono are supported on all PhatBox firmware revisions The Microsoft Speech API does not do a good job of converting the sample rate of speech generated by the Natural Voices engine You should make sure that the speech format is set to the native mode for the Natural Voices engine you are using 8KHz 16 Bit Mono for voices that do not end in 16 and 16KHz 16 bit Mono for voices ending in 16 If you are using a 16KHz Natural Voice you will need to convert the speech files as described in Section 3 2 before the PhatBox can use them Sample this text entry box and associated button lets you guickly generate samples of speech in order to determine what a particular voice rate etc will sound like Post Regexp Processing this text display box shows the actual command sent to the text to speech engine for the text in the sample box This will show the effect of any substitutions from your hints file if the Re
36. ties Ie Regexps subs txt a Debug Output T Voice ATT DTN 1 4 Mikelb Rate ____ Volume Format 1EkHz 16 Bit Mono Enter text you wish spoken here Sample Post Regesp Processing Each of the window areas is described below Running PhatVoice 3 2 The major function buttons are located in the top right area of the window They are Go generate speech for the selected items Close exit the PhatVoice program Save Settings save the current settings to the file phatvoice ini This file is automatically loaded whenever PhatVoice is started The Files to Generate area controls which items to generate speech for The following items are available Playlist the playlist name Artist the artist name Album the album name Track the track song title name Genre the genre The PhatNoise DMS area shows the path to the DMS files if a DMS was found when PhatVoice started otherwise it will be blank It contains the following items Note Database File the DMS file containing all the information about the Artist Album Track and Genre Playlist data comes from another location Output Directory where to place the generated speech files Always Replace Output Files if this box is checked any existing speech files for the selected items in the Files to Generate box will be replaced This is necessary if you want to replace the existing speech
37. tion Microsoft and Microsoft Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation This product incorporates ActivePerl from ActiveState Corporation Commercial support for ActivePerl is available through ActiveState at http www ActiveState com Support Enterprise For peer support resources for ActivePerl issues see http www ActiveState com Support Copyright O 2003 Terry Kennedy Documentation Dylan Ginsburg Ben Cohen and Terry Kennedy Software Contents PREFACE vi CHAPTER1 INTRODUCTION 1 1 1 1 OVERVIEW 1 1 1 1 1 Using hints to improve pronunciation 1 1 1 1 2 Generating speech for song titles jo 1 1 1 1 3 Utilizing additional Natural Voices 1 2 1 2 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES 1 2 CHAPTER 2 INSTALLING PHATVOICE 2 1 2 1 INSTALLATION PREREQUISITES 2 1 2 2 INSTALLING USING THE PHATVOICE SETUP WIZARD 2 1 2 3 INSTALLING FROM THE ZIPFILE 2 5 2 4 NECESSARY CHANGES ON THE PHATBOX DMS 2 5 2 4 1 Firmware revision gt gt 2 5 2 4 2 phatbox ini changes gt gt gt 2 5 2 4 3 The title mp3 file 2 7 CHAPTER 3 RUNNING PHATVOICE 3 1 3 1 GENERATING SPEECH 3 4 3 2 POST PROCESSING THE AUDIO FILES 3 5 3 2 1 Processing with Yamp 3 5 Contents 3 2 2 Processing with SoX gt gt 3 5 CHAPTER 4 CUSTOMIZING PRONUNCIATIONS 4 1 4 1 THE PRONUNCIATION HINTS FILE 4 1 4 1 1 Substitutions and regular expressions gt _ O 4 1 4
38. tion hints voice specific 4 1 4 Obtaining additional Natural Voices Note Note In addition to the Crystal and Mike voices that ship with the Natural Voices engine additional voices are available As of the publication of this manual the following voices were available e Julia American English female voice e Lauren American English female voice e Claire American English female voice e Mel American English male voice e Ray American English male voice e Rich American English male voice e Audrey UK English female voice e Anjali UK English with Indian accent female voice e Charles UK English male voice e Rosa Latin American Spanish female voice e Alberto Latin American Spanish male voice e Juliette French female voice e Alain French male voice e Klara German female voice e Reiner German male voice The non English voices cannot be used to produce English speech with a foreign accent without a great deal of additional pronunciation hinting However they are fine for pronouncing words in their native language Also the UK English voices use different phonetic symbols for their speech hints The Natural Voices engine and additional voices are available from a number of vendors During the development of the PhatVoice software we purchased voices from NextUp Technologies LLC Their order page is located at https www regsoft net regsoft vieworderpage php3 productid 56116 In order to
39. to do this This does not mean that these are the only utilities available only that these are two we have tried Feel free to experiment with other utilities 3 21 Processing with Yamp Yamp is a shareware multi purpose audio utility from Softuarium It is available from http www softuarium com yamp htm Use the WAV resampler option to re sample to 22 050 Hz 16 bits sample We recommend checking the Two passes checkbox 3 2 2 Processing with Sox SoX is a freeware utility for manipulating sound files It is available from http sox sourceforge net You will need a rather convoluted command line to have SoX process all of your files As an example for c in wav do sox c r 22050 new Sc resample This will cause Sox to place the output files in a subdirectory called new The quotes around c are required because the filenames can have embedded spaces and other special characters in them and the double backslash is needed as SoX is a Unix derived program where the backslash is a special character and not a directory delimiter 3 5 4 Customizing Pronunciations You will find that once you generate speech for your DMS and listen to it youll find a number of cases where the text to speech engine mispronounces items Using PhatVoice you can customize the pronunciation of any speech generated for your DMS This ranges from simple re spelling of a word to generate a better pronunciation all the way through
40. use cmd instead of command which has a number of additional features Here is a sample session 4 9 Customizing Pronunciations 4 10 Note C Temp gt cd C Program Files PhatVoice C Program Files PhatVoice gt fec old txt new txt Comparing files old txt and NEW TXT REE GANA Tt Various Artists Best of Trance 2000 Unknown Genre SEN NEW TXT Various Artists Best of Trance 2000 Unknown Genre KKKKK ERRAR AINA Treat Various Artists Best of Trance 2000 Unknown Genre Sees NEW a Various Artists Best of Trance 2000 Unknown Genre KKKKK Volumeume 1 Volume 1 Volumeume 1 Volume 1 C Program Files PhatVoice gt For advanced users if you have access to a Unix system or have Unix like tools installed on your PC you can perform some steps to reduce the bulk of this output while preserving the ability to easily find the differences 0 1 host terry test gt sort old txt unig gt old sort 0 2 host terry test gt sort new txt unig gt new sort 0 3 host terry test gt diff old sort new sort 89 90c89 90 lt lt pron sym f ah ng k 1 k ah ng lt lt pron sym f ah ng k 1 gt lt pron sym f ah ng k 1 gt lt pron sym f ah ng k 1 109c109 lt lt pron sym 1 ay v 1 gt gt lt pron sym 1 ay v 1 gt 428c428 f y uw 1 zh ax n gt Ninja Cuts Volumeume 3 disc k ah ng f y uw 1 zh ax n gt Ninja Cuts Volumeume 3 disc k ah ng f y uw 1 zh ax n gt Ninja Cuts Volum
41. ws Start Menu using the folder name you gave the Setup Wizard If you chose to install the Desktop shortcut you may also start PhatVoice via that shortcut 2 3 2 4 2 4 1 2 4 2 Installing PhatVoice Installing from the zipfile If you decided to download and install from the zipfile instead of using the PhatVoice Setup Wizard simply open the PhatVoice zip file using a zip utility of your choice and extract the files into a new directory You will need to create any Start Menu items or Desktop shortcuts manually Necessary changes on the PhatBox DMS You can use PhatVoice without making any changes to your DMS In fact you can experiment with it and work on text pronunciation hints without even having a cradle attached to your PC However a few changes to your DMS will let you get even more out of PhatVoice Firmware revision We recommend that you run the latest firmware for your particular PhatBox regardless of whether you use PhatVoice or not You can check and or update your firmware revision from the Device view in PMM Select the Hardware Options item and then Firmware Setup Consult Appendix A of the PhatNoise Car Audio System User Manual for more information about updating firmware phatbox ini changes Your PhatBox will use the new speech for Playlist Artist Album and Genre without requiring any changes to the PhatBox configuration files However if you want your PhatBox to announce song names you will need
42. you have an 8KHz Natural Voice engine select 8KHz 16 Bit Mono If you have a 16KHz engine things are more complicated Your best bet is to select 16KHz 16 Bit Mono and use an out board utility to re encode to 22KHz 16 bit mono If you don t have such a utility or it is too much trou ble you can select 44KHz 16 Bit Mono with some slight loss of speech guality and a substantial disk space penalty Pending input from PhatNoise regarding plans to add 16Khz support to the PhatBox we may either add resampling to PhatVoice or provide an outboard conversion utility Defect Enhancement ID D E 0005 Affected Version s 2 0 alpha and subsequent Fixed in Version Status open Summary Uninstalled Natural Voices generate Speak Error messages Description While the PhatVoice Voice selection box will only allow the user to select from the installed Natural Voices it is possible to request a different voice in a substitution regexp For example lt voice required name Klaral6 gt 1 lt voice gt If the selected voice is not installed on the system where PhatVoice is running any attempt to use that voice will generate a Speak Error message Defect Enhancement ID D E 0014 Affected Version s 2 0 alpha and subsequent Fixed in Version Status open Summary PhatVoice should be statically linked with the Perl library Description PhatVoice 2 0 alpha and subsequent requires a Perl Library in order to perform regular expressio
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