Listen to FreeTTS! Talking clock (16k voice): AU format WAV format Talking machine (8k): AU format WAV format Talking machine (16k): AU format WAV format Susie (16k): AU format WAV format Cookie Cooks (16k): AU format WAV format Tricky Tokenizing (16k): "For 3/4 or 75% of his time, Dr. Walker practices for $90 a visit on Dr. Dr., next to King Philip X of St. Lameer St. in Nashua NH." AU format WAV format Thanks! (16k MBROLA): AU format WAV format WebStartClock A clock that uses FreeTTS to announce the time. Launch WebStartClock  FreeTTS Links Project Page Forums Download CVS Repository Hosted by SourceForge.net

Welcome! Thank you for your interest in FreeTTS. General Information Introduction Authors Release Notes Possible uses of FreeTTS How to contribute to FreeTTS Acknowledgments Installation Downloading and Installing Quick Start Building Applications with FreeTTS Building FreeTTS Testing FreeTTS Demos Running the Demos FreeTTS Test Program Tools Importing Voice Data from FestVox Documentation API documentation Writing software using FreeTTS Programmer's Guide Frequently Asked Questions Why must I use Java TM 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v 1.4? How does FreeTTS perform? What voices are available? Why does the diphone synthesizer sound so bad? How do I create a new voice? How do I import new voice data from Festival and FestVox? How do I add support for a language other than English? How do I output synthesized speech to an audio file? Does FreeTTS provide full support for the JSAPI 1.0 specification? Why do I get a NoClassDefFoundError when I try to run a demo? Why do I get an UnsupportedClassVersionError when I try to run a demo? What does the message "Can't find diphone xx-yy" mean? I get no sound when I run one of the FreeTTS demos. Why? Can I use FreeTTS in an applet? Can I use FreeTTS with JavaTM Web Start How do I bypass the need for speech.properties? What does the message "Line unavailable" mean? Where is the speech recognizer?

General Information about FreeTTS

• Introduction

  FreeTTS is a speech synthesis system written entirely in the Java^TM programming language. It is based upon Flite: a small run-time speech synthesis engine developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Flite is derived from the Festival Speech Synthesis System from the University of Edinburgh and the FestVox project from Carnegie Mellon University.

  This release of FreeTTS includes:

  • Core speech synthesis engine
  • Support for a number of voices:
  • an 8khz diphone, male, US English voice
  • a 16khz diphone, male US English voice
  • a 16khz limited domain, male US English voice
  • Support for importing voices from FestVox (US English only)
  • Specific support for importing CMU ARCTIC voices from FestVox (US English only)
  • Support for MBROLA voices (downloaded separately):
  • a 16khz female, US English voice
  • two 16khz male US English voices
    
  • Partial support for JSAPI 1.0
  • Extensive API documentation
  • Several demo applications


• Authors

  FreeTTS was built by the Speech Integration Group of Sun Microsystems Laboratories:

  • Willie Walker, Manager and Principal Investigator
  • Paul Lamere, Staff Engineer
  • Philip Kwok, Member of Technical Staff

  You can contact the Sun Microsystems Speech Integration Group through the FreeTTS Forums.

  FreeTTS is based on CMU's Flite, written by:

  • Alan Black
  • Kevin Lenzo

  Kevin and Alan generated the data used by FreeTTS. In addition, Kevin is the voice behind the diphone voices (kevin 8k, kevin 16k), and Alan is the voice behind the speaking clock.

  Support for MBROLA voice output was contributed by Marc Schröder, text-to-speech Researcher in the Language Technology Lab at DFKI, Saarbrücken, Germany.

  Support for importing FestVox voices into FreeTTS, and support for dynamically discovering and loading voices was developed by David Vos, a Sun Microsystems Laboratories student intern.

• Possible uses of FreeTTS

  Here are a few possible uses of FreeTTS:

  • JSAPI 1.0 Synthesizer. FreeTTS provides partial support for the Java Speech API (JSAPI) 1.0 specification.
  • Remote TTS Server. FreeTTS can serve as a back-end text-to-speech engine that works with a speech/telephony system, or does the "heavy lifting" for a wireless PDA. Our client/server demo shows how this can be done.
  • Desktop TTS engine. You can use FreeTTS as your workstation/desktop TTS engine. For example, our Emacspeak demo works right out of the box with Emacspeak.
    
  • Downloadable Web Application. You can use FreeTTS with Java Web Start. Our WebStartClock demo provides an example of how to do this.
    


• How to contribute to FreeTTS

  We welcome contributions to FreeTTS. If you have code or fixes you would like to submit, please contact the FreeTTS team at freetts-contacts@sourceforge.net. The terms for contributing code are generous and are as follows:

  • Your code must be made available under the same BSD-style license agreement as FreeTTS.
  • You may place your own copyright in your source files.
  • You must sign and return the Contributor's Agreement to the address specified in the Contributor's Agreement.
  • If you wish, we will add you to the "Acknowledgments" section on the FreeTTS front page.

  These terms are for your and our protection and help ensure FreeTTS continues to be a viable and successful open source project.

• Acknowledgments

  Refer to acknowledgments to see the list of people and organizations we would like to thank for making this project possible. Most of all, we thank our management for letting us do this, and Alan Black and Kevin Lenzo for doing Flite.

Installation

FreeTTS has been tested on the Solaris ^TM Operating Environment, Mac OS X, Linux and Win32 operating systems.

Running, building, and testing FreeTTS requires the Java^TM 2 SDK, Standard Edition, 1.4. You can download the developer kit from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/. Make sure you set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to point your installation (e.g., JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.0).

Downloading and Installing

FreeTTS has three packages available for download:

• bin: provides the jar files, documentation, and demos
• src: provides the sources, documentation, and demos
• tst: provides the JUnit and regression tests; requires the src package

If you plan on just creating applications with FreeTTS, the bin package will be sufficient. If you plan on making modifications to FreeTTS itself, however, you should use the src package. The tst package will be useful if you wish to make sure any changes you made to FreeTTS did not introduce any bugs or regressions.

Download and unpack the package(s) appropriate for what you want to do. Depending upon what you download, you will end up with all or part of the following directory structure:

    bin                 Binaries for the demos
    build.xml           Ant file for building the sources
    com                 FreeTTS sources
    de                  Sources for MBROLA support
    demo                Sources for the demos
    demo.xml            Ant file for building the demos
    docs                System documentation
    javadoc             Javadoc for FreeTTS
    lib                 Jars for FreeTTS
    mbrola              Support for MBROLA
    tests               Sources and scripts for JUnit and regression tests
    tools               Tools for importing CMU ARCTIC and FestVox voice data

FreeTTS makes liberal use of the "Class-Path" attribute of a jar Manifest. As such, you need to place very little in your classpath when you run applications. The only things you need to do are the following:

• Place the lib directory anywhere you want.
• Make sure lib/freetts.jar is in your classpath.

Note that the demonstration applications also use a jar Manifest that uses the "Class-Path" attribute. The build places the jar files for FreeTTS in the lib directory, and the jar files for the demos in the bin directory. The jar manifests for the demos depend on the lib and bin directories being in the same top level directory. If you change this, the demos may not work properly.

Quick Start

If you are not interested in building FreeTTS, then you only need to download the FreeTTS binary distribution from the FreeTTS Download Page. Once you've downloaded and unpacked the FreeTTS binary distribution, perform the following steps:

1. Set up support for the Java Speech API (JSAPI).
2. Run any of the demos.

Building Applications with FreeTTS

We have provided a number of demonstration applications that use FreeTTS. We highly suggest that you use these as examples for how to create your own applications. As noted above, FreeTTS makes liberal use of the "Class-Path" attribute of a jar Manifest. As such, you need to place very little in your classpath when you run applications. The only things you need to do are the following:

• Place the lib directory anywhere you want.
• Make sure lib/freetts.jar is in your classpath.

Building FreeTTS

The prerequisites for building FreeTTS are as follows:

• FreeTTS Source Distribution. Download from the FreeTTS download page.


• JSAPI 1.0 specification implementation. The JSAPI 1.0 specification implemention comes with the FreeTTS Source Distribution. All you need to do is set up JSAPI support.


• Java^TM 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4 available at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/ (all platforms). After you have downloaded and installed the SDK, remember to set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to where you installed it.


• Apache Ant 1.5.3 or better. After you install ant, sure the "ant" command is in your path. Visit the Apache Ant site to get ant. NOTE: As you can see, we are no longer using GNUMake.


• JUnit Version 3.7. available at http://www.junit.org (all platforms). IMPORTANT: copy the junit.jar to the lib directory of your Apache Ant installation.

To build FreeTTS, merely type the following in a command prompt situated at the top level FreeTTS directory:

ant

This executes the Apache Ant command to build the FreeTTS classes, voices, demos, and jar files. The output will be placed under the bld directory.

We have also provided a number of ant targets for convenience:

ant clean: deletes all the output from the build to give you a fresh start
ant javadoc: builds the javadoc documentation and places the results in the javadoc directory
ant junit: for testing only; runs the JUnit tests (see Testing FreeTTS)

Testing FreeTTS

FreeTTS includes a number of unit and regression tests. The unit tests verify that critical routines are working properly. The regression tests verify that the output of FreeTTS matches what is expected.

Although we test FreeTTS regularly as part of our development process, testing FreeTTS is optional for you. The prerequisites for testing FreeTTS are as follows:

• Follow Instructions for Building FreeTTS.


• FreeTTS Test Distribution. In addition to the sources, you must also download the test distribution from the FreeTTS download page.


• UNIX Scripting tools. The regression tests use a number of UNIX tools including: sed, awk, diff,and wc. For Windows users, these tools are available with the Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com) package. As part of the Cygwin install, make sure you select the "make" package from the "Devel" category, the "findutils" package from the "Base" category, and the "zip" package from the "Archive" category. In addition, make sure you modify your PATH environment variable to include the cygwin/bin directory before any Windows directories.

To run the units tests for FreeTTS, merely type the following in a command prompt situated at the top level FreeTTS directory:

ant junit

The test output should be self explanatory.

To run the regression tests, merely type the following in a command prompt situated at the FreeTTS tests directory:

./regression.sh

The test output should be self explanatory.

Demos

FreeTTS includes a number of demos. Each demo directory has Java source file(s) containing the demo source and a 'README.html' file with brief instructions as to how to run the demo.

• JSAPI/HelloWorld: uses the JSAPI 1.0 Synthesis interface to speak "Hello, World".


• JSAPI/MixedVoices: demonstrates using multiple voices and speech synthesizers in a coordinated fashion using JSAPI 1.0.


• JSAPI/Player: Swing-based GUI that allows the user to monitor and manipulate a JSAPI 1.0 Speech Synthesizer.


• JSAPI/JTime: JSAPI program that uses a limited-domain, high quality voice to tell the time.


• JSAPI/Emacspeak: uses JSAPI 1.0 to provide a text-to-speech server for Emacspeak.


• JSAPI/WebStartClock: JSAPI talking clock that can be downloaded from the web using Java Web Start.


• freetts/HelloWorld: low-level (non-JSAPI) program that speaks a greeting to the world.


• freetts/ClientServer: low-level (non-JSAPI) socket-based TTS server with sample clients written in the C programming language and the Java programming language.

NOTE: The binaries for the demos exist as jar files in the bin directory of the binary distribution. If you only wish to run the demos, follow only the "Running" instructions for each demo. If you want to compile the demos, you must get the sources from the FreeTTS source distribution available on the FreeTTS Download Page.

Note also that the demonstration applications also use a jar Manifest that uses the "Class-Path" attribute. The build places the jar files for FreeTTS in the lib directory, and the jar files for the demos in the bin directory. The jar manifests for the demos depend on the lib and bin directories being in the same top level directory. If you change this, the demos may not work properly.

FreeTTS Test Program

The FreeTTS distribution includes a program that will allow you to test many of the features of FreeTTS. This program is started by running the following command:

java -jar lib/freetts.jar.

NAME
    freetts - exercise the FreeTTS synthesis sytem


DESCRIPTION
    The lib/freetts.jar contains a main entry point that allows a user to
    interactively control the FreeTTS synthesizer.  When invoked with no 
    arguments, freetts will read text from the command line and convert 
    the text to speech.  freetts can also be used to convert text from a 
    file to speech.  It includes options that allow you to redirect the 
    audio to file, as well as a number of metrics and debugging options.

OPTIONS
    There are a number of options that can be used to affect the operation 
    of freetts as described here:

    -detailedMetrics: turn on detailed metrics
    -dumpAudio file : dump audio to file 
    -dumpAudioTypes : dump the possible output types
    -dumpMultiAudio file : dump audio to file 
    -dumpRelations  : dump the relations 
    -dumpUtterance  : dump the final utterance
    -dumpASCII file : dump the final wave to file in ASCII form (for testing)
    -file file      : speak text from given file
    -lines file     : render lines from a file
    -help           : shows usage information
    -metrics        : turn on metrics
    -run  name      : sets the name of the run
    -silent         : don't say anything
    -streaming      : use streaming audio player
    -text say me    : speak given text (should be last argument)
    -url path       : speak text from given URL
    -verbose        : verbose output
    -version        : shows version number
    -voice VOICE    : kevin, kevin16, mbrola_us1, mbrola_us2, or mbrola_us3
    -voiceInfo      : print detailed voice info

EXAMPLES
Interactive mode:

    % java -jar lib/freetts.jar
    Enter text:  Hello World.
    <text is spoken>
    Enter text:  ^D
    %

Speaking text from a command line:

    % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -text hello world
    <text is spoken>

Speaking text from a file:

    % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -file my_email.txt
    <text is spoken>

Selecting an alternate voice:

    % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -voice kevin16 -text Hello World
    <text is spoken>

Redirecting audio to a file:

    % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -dumpAudio hello.wav -text Hello World

Tools

Importing Voice Data from FestVox

FreeTTS now has the ability to import voice data from FestVox (US English only). With this, you can record your own voice using the FestVox tools, and then turn the resulting data into a FreeTTS voice.

Visit our FestVoxToFreeTTS page to learn how to create your own voices for FreeTTS. It's not trivial, and it requires using Festival and FestVox.

Importing CMU ARCTIC Voice Data

FreeTTS now has the ability to import CMU ARCTIC voice data from FestVox (US English only). The CMU ARCTIC voices are quite large and require a little extra work, so we created tools just for these voices.

Visit our ArcticToFreeTTS page to learn how to import the CMU ARCTIC voices into FreeTTS.

Documentation

• API documentation: The FreeTTS API contains the engine documentation.


• Writing software with FreeTTS: We recommend that you use the Java Speech API (JSAPI) 1.0 to interface with FreeTTS. The JSAPI interface provides the best method of controlling and using FreeTTS. The JSAPI demos provide a set of examples that show how to select a FreeTTS synthesizer and make it speak.


• Programmer's Guide: The Programmer's Guide provides a view of the FreeTTS internals. This is meant for people who wish to enhance FreeTTS itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why must I use Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4?

  Some of the many compelling reasons to use Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4. are:

  • New IO package - Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4 provides a new IO (java.nio) package that provides memory mapped file I/O. This package drastically reduces the load times of the FreeTTS databases.
  • Regular expressions - Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4 provides a new package for regular expression matching (java.util.regex). They are used in the FreeTTS text normalization step.
  • Assert Facility - Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4 added the new assert keyword to ensure that certain conditions are satisfied before continuing execution. FreeTTS uses this keyword in all stages of speech synthesis.
  • Compiler Optimizations - Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4 has numerous compiler optimizations that produce faster and more compact code. For example, with the -server switch, byte codes are optimized to eliminate bounds checking on array accesses whenever possible.


• How does FreeTTS perform?

  We compared the performance of FreeTTS with that of Flite (original C version) on a machine with this configuration:

  • single 296MHz CPU SPARC v9 processor
  • Solaris^TM 8 in 64-bit mode
  • Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v 1.4 

  We rendered the first two chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (about 20 minutes of text), and the entire text of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth (about 8 hours of text) using both Flite and FreeTTS. The results are summarized below:

  Single CPU 296MHz SPARC v9	Flite	FreeTTS
  Loading Time for 'Alice' text	0.0s	4.1s
  Processing Time for 'Alice' text	43.7s	24.1s
  Loading Time for 'Journey' text	0.0s	7.0s
  Processing Time for 'Journey' text	1019.2s	341.0s
  Time to first Sample (10 word sentence)	195ms	41ms

  On a 2-CPU system with the following configuration:

  • Dual 360MHz CPU SPARC v9 Processor system
  • Solaris^TM 8 in 64-bit mode
  • Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v 1.4 

  The results are summarized below:

  Dual CPU 360MHz SPARC v9	Flite	FreeTTS
  Loading Time for 'Alice' text	0.0s	2.9s
  Processing Time for 'Alice' text	35.7s	14.2s
  Loading Time for 'Journey' text	0.0s	3.8s
  Processing Time for 'Journey' text	842.7s	189.5s
  Time to first Sample (10 word sentence)	165ms	33ms



• What voices are available?

  Currently, the distribution comes with these 3 voices:

  • a low quality, unlimited domain, 8kHz diphone voice, called kevin
  • a medium quality, unlimited domain, 16kHz diphone voice, called kevin16
  • a high quality, limited domain, 16kHz cluster unit voice, called alan

  Each of the demos describes how to select which voice to use.

  FreeTTS also interfaces with the MBROLA synthesizer and can use MBROLA voices. There are three US English MBROLA voices available:

  • 16kHz female (mbrola1)
  • 16kHz male (mbrola2)
  • 16kHz male (mbrola3)

  See Installing MBROLA Voices for more details on installing support for MBROLA voices.

  NOTE: FreeTTS does not support MBROLA on the Windows platform.



• Why does the diphone synthesizer sound so bad?

  First of all, we're happy to say you can now create your own voices for FreeTTS, and you can also import CMU ARCTIC voices. It's not trivial, and it requires using Festival and FestVox.

  However, the ability to create your own voices doesn't explain why the current voices sound so bad. FreeTTS uses the same algorithms and voice data from Flite. Here is what the Flite README says about voice quality:

  "So you've eagerly downloaded flite, compiled it and run it, now you are disappointed that is doesn't sound wonderful, sure its fast and small but what you really hoped for was the dulcit tones of a deep baritone voice that would make you desperately hang on every phrase it sang. But instead you get an 8Khz diphone voice that sounds like it came from the last millenium.

  Well, first, you are right, it is an 8KHz diphone voice from the last millenium, and that was actually deliberate. As we developed flite we wanted a voice that was stable and that we could directly compare with that very same voice in Festival. Flite is an *engine*. We want to be able take voices built with the FestVox process and compile them for flite, the result should be exactly the same quality (though of course trading the size for quality in flite is also an option). The included voice is just an sample voice that was used in the testing process. We have better voices in Festival and are working on the conversion process to make it both more automatic and more robust and tunable, but we haven't done that yet, so in this first beta release. This old poor sounding voice is all we have, sorry, we'll provide you with free, high-quality, scalable, configurable, natural sounding voices for flite, in all languages and dialects, with the tools to built new voices efficiently and robustly as soon as we can. Though in the mean time, a few higher quality voices will be released with the next version.''

• How do I create a new voice?

  As of FreeTTS 1.2, we provide a set of tools that allow you to import FestVox voice data directly. As such, you need to use Festival and FestVox to record your data. See our documentation for more detail on how to do this.

• How do I import new voice data from Festival and FestVox?

  As of FreeTTS 1.2, we provide a set of tools that allow you to import FestVox voice data directly, and we also have tools that allows you to import CMU ARCTIC voices.

• How do I add support for a language other than English?

  This is not a trivial task as it requires a lexicon for the language as well as various statistical data about the language. The document http://festvox.org/festvox/festvox_toc.html describes this is more detail.

• How do I output synthesized speech to an audio file?

  With the FreeTTS test program, you can dump audio output to a file using the -dumpAudio option:

  -dumpAudio filename

  The audio file format can be .wav, .au, or .aif, depending on the file name. For example, if "filename" is "foo.au" the file format will be .au.

  The -dumpMultiAudio option (same format as -dumpAudio) dumps audio to multiple audio files, one file per utterance. In this case, if "filename" is "foo.wav", the files are named foo0.wav, foo1.wav, foo2.wav, etc.. Again, the file format is determined by the extension of the filename.
  

  If you are writing your own application, you can set the audio player of the FreeTTS Voice to one of the file-based audio players. See the FreeTTS API documentation for:

  • Voice - describes how to set the AudioPlayer for a voice. You can also set the default AudioPlayer via the command line by defining the "com.sun.speech.freetts.voice.defaultAudioPlayer" system property. The value of this property must be the name of a class that implements the AudioPlayer interface, and which also has a no-arg constructor.
  
  
  • FreeTTSVoice.getVoice - allows you to get the underlying FreeTTS Voice object from the JSAPI FreeTTSVoice object. NOTE that doing this means you end up straying from the JSAPI specification. An example of how you might use this method is as follows:

        desc = (SynthesizerModeDesc) synthesizer.getEngineModeDesc();
        javax.speech.synthesis.Voice[] jsapiVoices = desc.getVoices();
        javax.speech.synthesis.Voice jsapiVoice = voices[0];
        
        /* Non-JSAPI modification of voice audio player
         */
        if (jsapiVoice instanceof com.sun.speech.freetts.jsapi.FreeTTSVoice) {
            com.sun.speech.freetts.Voice freettsVoice = 
                ((com.sun.speech.freetts.jsapi.FreeTTSVoice) jsapiVoice).getVoice();
            freettsVoice.setAudioPlayer(new SingleFileAudioPlayer());
        }
    

  • SingleFileAudioPlayer - an AudioPlayer that sends all output to a single file.
  
  
  • MultiFileAudioPlayer - an AudioPlayer that sends each utterance to a separate file.


• Does FreeTTS provide full support for the JSAPI 1.0 specification?

  No. Since FreeTTS is a speech synthesis system, none of the JSAPI 1.0 Recognition interfaces are supported. In addition, FreeTTS supports only a subset of the JSAPI 1.0 javax.speech.synthesis specification. The FreeTTS support for JSAPI 1.0 has the following restrictions:

  • JSML Speech Markup is ignored. FreeTTS JSAPI will process JSML, but currently does not apply the markup to the generated speech.
  • FreeTTS does not currently generate the WORD_STARTED or the MARKER_REACHED events.
  • Vocabulary management is not supported.
  • The Synthesizer.phoneme() method is not implemented.
  • PropertyVeto exceptions are not always properly thrown when property change requests are rejected or constrained.

  Note that the JSAPI specification is undergoing changes. The official work being done on JSAPI is now for JSAPI 2.0 via the Java Community Process (JCP) under JSR-113. Read more about the JCP and JSR-113 at http://www.jcp.org.

• Why do I get a NoClassDefFoundError when I try to run a demo?

  You probably need to install the JSAPI 1.0 specification implementation. See the JSAPI setup guide for more details.

• Why do I get an UnsupportedClassVersionError when I try to run a demo?

  You probably are trying to run with an older (jdk 1.4) version of the java runtime. To verify this type:

  % java -version
  

  You should see something like: java version "1.4.0" or  higher. If you see something older that this, such as java version "1.2.2" then you are indeed running with an older version of the java runtime. See Prerequisites for building and running FreeTTS for more details on what is needed to run FreeTTS.

• What does the message "Can't find diphone xx-yy" mean?

  There are approximately 45 phonemes in the English language. FreeTTS uses a technique called diphone synthesis which uses pairs of phonemes called diphones as an index into the unit database. Not all phoneme combinations occur in the English language. FreeTTS, in order to conserve space, does not include diphone information for diphones that do not naturally occur. This message indicates that FreeTTS encountered one of these omitted diphones. This generally occurs when FreeTTS tries to speak gibberish or non-English text.

• I get no sound when I run one of the FreeTTS demos. Why?

  If you run HelloWorld or another one of the FreeTTS demos and receive no messages, then FreeTTS thinks that everything is working fine, but obviously it's not if you are not hearing anything. Try running another java application that uses the javax.sound APIs. Try downloading the javasound demo from http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/sound/samples/JavaSoundDemo/ and make sure that it runs (and 'sounds') OK.

• Can I use FreeTTS in an applet?

  We do not recommend trying this. It's a quagmire of complexity and the end user experience is not what you expect. The JSAPI layer of FreeTTS will attempt to access to the speech.properties file in the user's home directory. The applet security mechanism will not allow such access and will throw a SecurityException if such an attempt is made.

  Instead of using FreeTTS in an applet, we highly recommend you consider using Java Web Start.

• Can I use FreeTTS with Java^TM Web Start?

  FreeTTS includes a WebStartClock demo application that demonstrates how to write a Web Start application that uses FreeTTS.

• How do I bypass the need for speech.properties?

  JSAPI's Central class looks for a file named speech.properties. To bypass this, use a different mechanism. A detailed discussion of this approach in the FreeTTS Help forum: Avoiding the need for speech.properties.

  The WebStartClock demo also provides an example of how to do this:

      public void createSynthesizer() {
          try {
              SynthesizerModeDesc desc = 
                  new SynthesizerModeDesc(null, 
                                          "time", /* use "time" or "general" */
                                          Locale.US, 
                                          Boolean.FALSE,
                                          null);
  
              FreeTTSEngineCentral central = new FreeTTSEngineCentral();
              EngineList list = central.createEngineList(desc); 
              
              if (list.size() > 0) { 
                  EngineCreate creator = (EngineCreate) list.get(0); 
                  synthesizer = (Synthesizer) creator.createEngine(); 
              } 
              if (synthesizer == null) {
                  System.err.println("Cannot create synthesizer");
                  System.exit(1);
              }
              synthesizer.allocate();
              synthesizer.resume();
  
          } catch (Exception e) {
              e.printStackTrace();
          }
      }
  

• What does the message "Line unavailable" mean?

  This message is output when FreeTTS tries to allocate sound resources and the requested resources are unavailable. This can occur for a number of reasons:

  • Your computer does not have any sound capabilties, or is not allowing FreeTTS to access these capabilities
  • Another application is using the resources and cannot share them
  • The requested audio format is not suppported by your hardware


• Where is the speech recognizer?

  This is an implementation of a speech synthesizer and does not include a speech recognizer. Please keep your eye on the 'cmusphinx' project on SourceForge for developments in this area.