Australian LoquendoTTS voice   

Australian LoquendoTTS voice

Postby Downunder35m » Sun Feb 19, 2012 12:58 pm

For many years now we in Australia are being ignored when it comes to a proper voice that can handle our road and town names.
Some tried to get the Vocalizer voice Karen to work with mixed results and TT ignores all requests so far stating that the official language in Australia is British english.
Well that might be true, but tell that those people who choose our road and town names.

Spoiler: Show
Read only if you are interested in my struggles to get the release working]
I tried many timesover the years and failed every time.
This is due to simple problems:
a) TT has basically no documentation available on the internal workings of their modified voices
b) TT has some restrictions built in that I only discovered lately
c) Editing Loquendo libraries and lexicons is a real pain - at least for me, the guys at Nuance seem to do better ;)

All previous attempts were based on creating a new voice, which turned out to be virtually impossible.
Since I could not find a working download for a compatible Grace or Alan voice (the new Australian Loquendo voices TT won't support), I could only try to modify an existing voice.
Susan was out of the question so Kate had to die and was reborn.
I searched the net for compatible libraries and lexicons, modified what was needed and removed the british parts.
And failed again.
You have to know that TT only supports voice lexicons in languages that are available as a language for the menu/TT itself and from Nuance as well.
On top of that you are limited for the lexicons to what TT thinks is supported, which is only US and GB english.
Also TT thinks creating a file that contains all correct pronounciations for the map is a good idea - well only if you don't change a thing, if you do a road becomes a court, a Highway a place and so on...
The problem was solved in the end and the result was a Kate that finally was able to pronounce at least 100% better than the original.

Spoiler: Show
Things you should know - please read!]
Since Kate is now modified the support for british english is gone!
Install only if you need support for australian maps.
To make sure you get the same result as I did it is recommended to fully delete your existing LoquendoTTS folder.
If you have a dual boot device with SD and internal memory like a 720/730 you have to delete it on internal memory and SD!
Password: downunder

Spoiler: Show
Installation]
1. Make a full backup using Windows Explorer!
2. Check if your backup is complete!
3. Delete the folder LoquendoTTS on your device/SD
4. Unpack the archive to the root of your device/SD - all folders will be created.
5. Delete the file cphoneme.dat in your map folder.
6. Disconnect and start your TT.
7. Enjoy

Spoiler: Show
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Postby rasputinuk » Fri Mar 23, 2012 11:47 pm

Thanks for your efforts downunder35m, although I downloaded your previous posting I have it running with no problems as such on a GO300, bootloader 5.5242 + navcore 8.545 with upto 10Megs free mem which ain't bad for an old 32Meg device...Thanks again and I'd love to download an updated version of the british english version. I have got the simon voice to work with this as well.....:yahoo:
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