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I'm looking for a high-quality TTS engine that I can afford (let's say less than 1000$). So far, I've tried flite and festival with default voices. However, while the results are certainly understandable, technical texts are hard to follow.
Commercial TTS solutions from Loquendo and Readspeaker sound way better. However, these companies don't seem to be willing to sell their product to mere mortals - I can't find a price on either's homepage.
So, what are good TTS solutions for personal use?
Purchase it from NextUp.com site:
NextUp.com sells the best, most natural-sounding Text to Speech voices with more than 20 languages and many accents available.
"Natural Voices" from AT&T ($35.00)
"Verbose" from NCH ($29.99)
"TextAloud" from NextUp ($29.95)
"RealSpeak" from Nuance/ScanSoft ($45.00)
"Acapela" from Acapela Group ($35.00)
"Cepstral" from Cepstral LLC ($29.99)
There are also:
"CrazyTalk6 PRO" from Reallusion ($149.95)
"IVONA Voices" from ivona ($45)
"Dragon Premium" from Nuance ($199.99)
"VoiceText" from NeoSpeech (about $74.95)
"FonixTalk" from Fonix Speech (about $45.00)
"NaturalReader" from NaturalSoft ($199.50)
"Cerevoice" from Cereproc (about $36)
I was always impressed by Ivona http://www.ivona.com/?set_lang=en
They have a cheap personal version called expressivo (add .com - can't post more links) which is just $45. I know people who watch movies with Expressivo reading the subtitles, so it's actually very very good.
You can download better quality voices for festival than the ones shipped with it:
These seem to be the ones with the highest quality right now:
HMM-based Speech Synthesis System (HTS)
These seem to be ok too:
The MBROLA Project
Source:
HOWTO: Make festival TTS use better voices (MBROLA / CMU / HTS)
AT&T has a product called Natural Voices. I think that is sounds amazing compared with all of the other products out there. I'm not sure about pricing though.
http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
There are also some quite impressive open source solutions.
This one sounds quite impressive.
http://freetts.sourceforge.net/docs/index.php
Please check this site
Basically, it's a high level tutorial to use voices available from Android on Linux.
It's quite general, but the technic should work for most TTS engine.
I did some research on the topic in 2007 and tried several text to speech systems to read articles or convert them to mp3. I am surprised how little progress the consumer TTS products have made since then.
First I bought TextAloud by NextUp because in the web samples the voices sounded natural. However, it turned out that the way parts of the sentences were stressed made it really hard to understand scientific texts. I don't know if that has improved.
I then found the VoiceReader Home by Linguatec (49 Euro per voice) which did a very good job and I haven't found a better solution for myself since then. Linguatec just did an update which I have been using for a few weeks now and the quality improved even more.
However, I don't like their GUI and integration as much. I basically copy all texts that I want to read into the GUI window. Yet, the new version can also read pdf and word documents from file. And for me the most important factor is still the ease of listening and understanding of text even with a complex structure.
Linguatec looks like a small German company. I don’t know if they have their own TTS engine or use an external one.
I am not associated with Linguatec in any way and would be very interested in alternative suggestions!
Surprisingly, loquendo does sell stuff: Price list for Pay as you go TTS. Unfortunately, this works online when online, and costs a fortune for on-demand voice generation (30 minutes a day would come just under 120.000€ per year).
Nuance vocalizer but im afraid they do not say something about the prices. Nuance has a lot of high quality speech applications, so maybe they can make you happy.
I've used AT&T Natural Voices, they seem to sound most human to me.
For personal use, I'm using VocaTalk Personal Podcast. The app enhances speech, makes it stereo, puts bg music, generates mp3, uploads to skydrive/google drive, syncs up with iTunes or zune and what not. Perfect for on-the-go listening.
http://www.vocamedia.com/
For personal use you could also use "TextAid" from ReadSpeaker. It is web based personal reader and uses Acapela voices. It also has a translation feature!
http://www.readspeaker.com/readspeaker-textaid/
What about generating speech online? You can use the free website audiotext.ws text to speech to convert English texts to speech.
If you are looking for indian accent based output, take a look http://www.indiantts.com
It seem to sound most human ,Indian dialects.They offer download mp3 option I think from text.
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I need a personal archive tool to archive the programming algorithms, lessons, techniques and codes.
Something like a "Personal Wiki" that supports images attachments, code decoration, content categorization and search for any content at any time.
I know i can use an open source tool like forums or media wiki but i need something customized for this personal purpose.
Desktop tool or web tool.
For those who are search for the same purpose, I found some tools:
Here are some things I've tried with their pros and cons:
OneNote
Pros
Excellent ability to organise notes. You have have books containing section groups containing sections containing pages and subpages. I've got a book for Development, then a section group for Languages, then a section for Ruby, then pages for every topic within Ruby. The highlight here is that there's no penalty to creating dozens and dozens of pages on a given topic, helping you keep things organised when you get really deep into a specific topic. It's an easy mistake to just say "Yeah, a section for Languages, then a page for PHP", but before you know it the PHP page is half a mile long and you'll never sit down to properly re-read it again, it becomes a pain to find the info you want, etc.
Great support for multi-user notebooks. It properly keeps track of who added what and what got changed when, making co-operation easy.
Syntax highlighting can be done with the OneTastic plugin, which lets you define custom styles. Just define a custom style in a monospaced font with a special colour, and call it Code.
Support for tabular data, attached files, audio, video, etc, if you need that sort of thing.
Cons
Need to use a special app to consult it, so you can't just hit it from a work computer or the like.
Web app is clunky and lacking full features, I still haven't gotten a desktop notebook to properly sync as a web app notebook.
Search isn't the best.
MediaWiki
Pros
If you make it public, you can use Google on your notes, which is better than any other search.
CSS means it's easy to style and present it how you want without manually altering every bit of text like you'd need to in OneNote.
Because it's just a website like any other, you can access it from any device without installing anything or having to log in.
Export as ePub file, meaning you can read all your notes on your Kindle/ereader, really good for refreshing.
Any page can belong to multiple categories, which is nice.
Built in syntax highlighting with code tags.
Cons
Limited/clunky ability to organise in tiers, ultimately a fatal flaw for me.
Becomes a pain to quickly add notes to pages. (I would kill for a no-page-reload transition between read/edit modes!)
Reliant on an internet connection (usually not a problem, but something to be aware of).
Plaintext files in folders
Pros
Zero learning curve/adaptation.
Read them anywhere with no special software (tip: put them in a shared Dropbox folder, map an address on your domain to that folder).
Read natively on ereaders or convert to ebook format with no real effort.
Cons
No syntax highlighting, no image/audio/video media, no tabular data.
Hard to fuzzy search.
Edit conflicts if you're studying alongside someone.
Google Drive
Pros
Excellent support for sharing/co-operation
Good search
Good mobile support
Supports a lot of media
Cons
Tends to be slow to use
Presentation options tend to be frustrating
Reliant on internet connection
My personal recommendation: OneNote + Onetastic plugin, using all tiers/dividers, exported to PDF or multiple PDFs regularly so you can consult them from elsewhere.
Quoted from this link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/3acusr/how_to_take_notes_while_learning_programming/
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In past years I have learned the most important languages for web development (CSS, HTML, JS, PHP) and I can create good-structured sites.
But an important part of web design is the images used for buttons, backgrounds, text, gradients... Also the main logo is a very important element in the layout of a website.
However, I dont know how to get started in that side of web design for developing good looking websites.
What tools should use for that purposes? Do you know good guides?
I have read one books and some guides about photoshop, but they are about graphics design in general and I am looking for a guide/books focused on web graphic design and also (if posible), focused on how to place these images correctly using css and xhtml.
PD: Sorry for the bad English.
Thanks!
I'm certainly no pro, and probably not even very good myself, but I think one good way is to just do it. The more you practice, the more you learn and improve, and your designs will get better and better.
As you are building sites, you'll run into "problems" which you can then find answers to on the internet or on sites like stack overflow. It's also useful to look at designs from other sites and try to see how they did it.
In terms of tools, you probably don't need anything really fancy to get started. I mostly only use Paint.NET and InkScape. I try to use few images if I can.
Ever since I started learning web design & development what I find most effective for learning is looking at other web sites. In looking at other web sites it is advisable to look at examples of both good and bad design, just so you're aware of the difference.
Learning by example is, for me, the best way to learn because you really see how design concepts and ideas are applied. When you finally have an idea on the look and feel that you want to apply to your web site then you can start researching on the technicalities of creating them (e.g. Google 'how to paint shop pro web 2.0-style buttons' or 'how to photoshop gradient web buttons'). It's really up to you on which tool you want to use because it depends on what you're comfortable with using. An upside of using Photoshop, I think, is that there are a lot of tutorials that you can just Google for online.
I recommend going to http://www.alistapart.com/ for guides, articles & tutorials on web design.
Here is the web designing tutorials.
40+ Greatest Web Interface Design Photoshop Tutorials, Part I
Pegaweb
Web dev tuts
WebDesign
25 Photoshop Tutorials for Web Designers
Blue Print Layout: Converting a PSD to HTML Tutorial
You may use the boostrap plugin. I have discovered a site http://www.webdesignernews.com/
You may see there are many ideas of creating a website.
This site is very useful to create professional style navigation bars and loading style or types of buttons, etc.
For logos and all Canva is best to use where you can design logos facebook cover, poster and all necessary things. All the sites mentioned above are completely free.
For some ideas of creating web pages You may visit TheSoftwareGuy.
believing that knowing how to use photoshop is enough to tell people you can design websites is wrong. Tools can definitely make the difference but that doesn't replace a person's real talent and skill that gives the design a unique edge.
my 2 cents.
You can follow the approch like create a template using Photoshop or Gimph. If you are creating a site for client create a 2-3 templates with different layouts and show them to client. If they are good and approved, create a HTML templates for those and after that embed server side.
After a practice can design a better site.
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What is the best API to utilize in developing an application that handles both realtime MIDI and audio input and output? This would be for an application that is used in the process of making music as opposed to playing audio or MIDI files. I'm aware that this may be a subjective question, but if you know of an API that is dominantly used for these purposes, please share it.
I'm agnostic about which language the API is for, and I also don't care about portability. The real concern is for an API that is well documented, well designed (e.g. thought out and intuitive to developers using it), and actively maintained. OS portability would be nice, but it is second to having an API/Language that meets the previous requirements.
Please note that the emphasis is not on API's for sound synthesis or for composing music with code. It is intended for the handling of sound file and MIDI data in a real-time context.
It's probably a pretty roundabout way of doing it, but I'd be pretty excited to work with MIDI in HTML5. Writing a MIDI synth in JS would probably be rather trivial, thanks to the new audio APIs that are making their way onto the web. Since it's in a web browser, you can do some of the preliminary processing on the client and then do some of the hardcore processing on the server.
I should also mention that HTML is a great language to create a GUI for this sort of app, and the cross-platform benefits are inherent in the fact that it's made for the web.
This is a bit late, but SuperCollider and cSound would be well worth checking out.
Supercollider https://supercollider.github.io/
cSound http://www.csounds.com/
You might want to look at some unconventional "languages" (well, dataflow programming environments) like:
pd: http://puredata.info/
MAX/MSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software)
Reaktor: http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/producer/reaktor-5/
I've also done some mucking about with Java and MIDI and had a good time with that.
I never used it personally tho, but there is a C-like language dedicated to music called Chuck.
Ruby works very well, as seen on the Sonic Pi.
The W3C has some solid specs on the web audio API. It's a powerful api that can allow you to synthesize, edit, and analyze sound. You can also import audio via arrayBuffers. It also has very strong support.
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I have asked What should i know about search engine crawling? Now i would like to know where can i learn about search engines and search engines optimization? Instead of reading dozen of articles with most saying the same thing as another i would like to read one book or resource and find everything i need to know.
The best kind of SEO is having really good and readable content on your site. :)
That's hard to answer.
I wouldn't recommend a book, because before anything about SEO gets into print, a lot of it will be outdated, so I'd rather stick to up-to-date online resources.
There are different approaches to SEO (e.g. "black hat" / "white hat" SEO) so considering only one resource will only give you part of the picture.
Some approaches will only be opinions so checking different resources should clear things up for you better than a single one could.
So I guess to "find everything you need to know" you'll have to check a lot of different resources / articles / forums, etc. etc. and then see what works best for you (and how much time and effort you'd like to spend) ...
I'd say don't bother spending too much time. SEO is simple:
Titles in URL
Title in h1
Have a sitemap
Get links from popular sites into your site
and... QUALITY & SPECIFIC CONTENT
I know this doesn't answer your question directly, however I feel you'll probably find better answers on stack overflow than in a book. That link to Google Webmaster Guidelines is a good resource too.
For SEO and crawling, instead of trying to outsmart Google and others, it is easier and more effective to listen to Google and follow their guidelines.
Here is a 22 page PDF about SEO from Google: Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
Another useful Google PDF: Making the Most of your Content
Matt Cutts's blog (a Google engineer): PageRank and other SEO Topics
How PageRank works from Wikipedia: PageRank in Wikipedia
Avinash Kaushik is a well known expert on all things web/analytics/customer related.
His first book "Web Analytics, an hour a day" is excellent. He has since released a second book, "Web Analytics 2.0", which I own but have yet found the time to read. He used to work for Intuit, now works for Google.
You can read his blog, Occam's Razor. Both of his books are mentioned on the right hand side (scroll down a bit).
If you are going to read one book, read either of the two books written by him.
I read his book after reading other books dedicated to just SEO, or just Google. I still found interesting things in his book that I didn't elsewhere. After reading his book you'll have a lot to think about and some very good ideas what you want to read next (or not read).
I've seen some slideshows/webinars given by him. He is entertaining, humourous, engaging, definitely intelligent and doesn't mince his words about stuff he doesn't like. If you get a chance to watch any of his stuff, do so.
Unlike many bloggers, you can find his email address AND he actually answers email you send him.
If you want a straight SEO book this isn't it, but highly recommended nonetheless.
A lot of this comes from personal information so go and ask anyone who has a website. You will find most of it is intuitive and common sense. What my friend does is get a little kid to look at it and point to whatever sticks out. It is an easy way to check what is showing up on your website. Try to draw attention to the key parts of the website. http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/.
Also, check out
http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html
http://www.seotutorial.info/
http://www.webconfs.com/seo-tutorial/
SEO Book is a very informative website.
http://www.seobook.com/
Check that out.
Go to http://www.seomoz.org. You'll find a ton of information and a number of tools to get you started.
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I'm trying to produce a timeline for my real-time embedded code.
I need to show all the interrupts, what triggers them, when they are serviced, how long they execute, etc. I have done the profiling and have the raw data, now I need a way to show the timeline graphically, to scale.
I've been searching for a good tool, but haven't come up with anything great yet. Everything that I've found works on timelines of days and years. I want a graph showing a single 2-millisecond cycle. For now I'm using Visio, but I keep thinking there must be something easier. Any ideas?
I'm hoping to produce something like this: .
Unfortunately, mine is more complicated, but that's the general idea.
So at that scale your abscissas is going to be a pure number (e.g. microseconds from the start time, or some such). Graphing tools to graph things like this are commonplace.
I'd suggest something like gnuplot, but I suspect there's more to the problem than is evident in your summary.
Ah, the picture makes it all much clearer. If gnuplot doesn't do it for you, I'll offer another suggestion (or at least tell you what I'd do): write it from scratch.
Specifically, I'd probably throw together something in a scripting language (ruby, python, whatever) to read the data and generate pic code that looked the way I wanted. If you decide to go that route, here's an overview of pic basics and also the manual. If you dig in you should have something plausible in an hour and within a week you'll have something that suits you better than any off the shelf GUI app ever will.
I feel for you. In my system, we have a 1.1 millisecond cycle and 13 measurement points over 4 different components. I suspect you're facing similar complexity.
Bad news is there are no off-the-shelf solutions I'm aware of. However MarkusQ is correct stating that you can use (abuse?) standard graphing packages to accomplish what you need. But you will need to invest some time to customize the output to your liking.
We make extensive use of the R Project driven by Python code via RPy R/Python bridge to generate our plots. This setup works very well for us and has enabled us to automate the process. Python is used to acquire and cleanse the data from the real-time system and R does the drawing.
R's graphics customization support is extensive allowing you to control all aspects of the plot, locations, sizes, etc. It can be intimidating at first, but there is an excellent book R Graphics that helps with a companion website that contains all of the book's examples.
Whatever you choose, make sure there's the ability to automate via scripting. The amount of data real-time systems generate is too much to deal with without flexible tools.
gtkwave could be used