mbrola.md 4.5KB
MBROLA VOICES {.western}
The Mbrola project is a collection of diphone voices for speech synthesis. They do not include any text-to-phoneme translation, so this must be done by another program. The Mbrola voices are cost-free but are not open source. They are available from the Mbrola website at:
http://www.tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola/mbrcopybin.html
eSpeak can be used as a front-end to Mbrola. It provides the spelling-to-phoneme translation and intonation, which Mbrola then uses to generate speech sound.
Voice Names {.western}
To use a Mbrola voice, eSpeak needs information to translate from its own phonemes to the equivalent Mbrola phonemes. This has been set up for only some voices so far.
The eSpeak voices which use Mbrola are named as:\ mb-xxx
where xxx is the name of a Mbrola voice (eg. mb-en1 for the Mbrola
“en1” English voice). These voice files are in eSpeak’s directory
espeak-data/voices/mbrola{.western}.
The installation instructions below use the Mbrola voice “en1” as an
example. You can use other mbrola voices for which there is an
equivalent eSpeak voice in espeak-data/voices/mbrola{.western}.
There are some additional eSpeak Mbrola voices which speak English text using a Mbrola voice for a different language. These contain the name of the Mbrola voice with a suffix -en. For example, the voice mb-de4-en will speak English text with a German accent by using the Mbrola de4 voice.
Windows Installation {.western}
The SAPI5 version of eSpeak uses the mbrola.dll.
- 2. 3. 4.
Linux Installation {.western}
From eSpeak version 1.44 onwards, eSpeak calls the mbrola program directly, rather than passing phoneme data to it using a pipe.
- 2. 3.
Mbrola Voice Files {.western}
eSpeak’s voice files for Mbrola voices are in directory
espeak-data/voices/mbrola{.western}. They contain a line:\
mbrola <voice> <translation>{.western} \
eg.\
mbrola en1 en1_phtrans{.western}
- -
They are binary files which are compiled, using espeakedit, from source
files in phsource/mbrola{.western}, see below.
Mbrola Phoneme Translation Data {.western}
Mbrola phoneme translation files specify translations from eSpeak phoneme names to mbrola phoneme names. They are referenced from voice files.
The source files are in phsource/mbrola{.western}. These are compiled
using the espeakedit{.western} program
(Compile->Compile mbrola phonemes list{.western}) to produce data
files in espeak-data/mbrola_ph{.western} which are used by eSpeak.
Each line in the mbrola phoneme translation file contains:
<control> <espeak ph1> <espeak ph2> <percent> <mbrola ph1> [<mbrola ph2>]{.western}
<control>
<espeak ph1>\ The eSpeak phoneme which is to be translated to an mbrola phoneme.
<espeak ph2>\
If this field is not NULL{.western}, then the match only occurs if
this field matches the next phoneme. If control bit 1 is set, then the
previous rather than the next phoneme is matched. This field may
also have the following values:\
VWL{.western} matches any Vowel phoneme.
<percent>\ If this field is zero then only one mbrola phoneme is used. If this field is non-zero, then two mbrola phonemes are used, and this value gives the percentage length of the first mbrola phoneme.
<mbrola ph1>\
The mbrola phoneme to which the eSpeak phoneme is translated. This
field may be NULL{.western}.
<mbrola ph2>\ The second mbrola phoneme. This field is only used if the <percent> field is not zero.
The list is searched from start to finish, until a match is found. Therefore, a line with more specific match condition should appear before a line which matches the same eSpeak phoneme but with a more general condition.
The file dictsource/dict_phonemes{.western} lists the eSpeak phonemes
which are used for each language. Translations for all these should be
given in the mbrola phoneme translation file. In addition, some phonemes
which are referenced from phoneme files (eg.
phsource/ph_language, phsource/phonemes{.western}) in lines such as:
beforenotvowel l/
reduceto a# 0
should also be included, even though they don’t appear in
dictsource/dict_phonemes{.western}.
If the language’s *_list or *_rules files includes rules to speak words “as English” the mbrola phoneme translation file should include rules which translate English phonemes into near equivalents, so that they can spoken by the mbrola voice.