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\input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
@c %**start of header
@setfilename flite.info
@settitle Flite: a small, fast speech synthesis engine
@finalout
@setchapternewpage odd
@c %**end of header
@c This document was modelled on the numerous examples of texinfo
@c documentation available with GNU software, primarily the hello
@c world example, but many others too. I happily acknowledge their
@c aid in producing this document -- awb
@set EDITION 2.0
@set VERSION 2.0
@set UPDATED 18th November 2014
@ifinfo
This file documents @code{Flite}, a small, fast run-time speech
synthesis engine.
Copyright (C) 2001-2014 Carnegie Mellon University
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
are preserved on all copies.
@ignore
Permission is granted to process this file through TeX, or otherwise and
print the results, provided the printed document carries copying
permission notice identical to this one except for the removal of this
paragraph (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
@end ignore
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission
notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions,
except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved
by the authors.
@end ifinfo
@titlepage
@title Flite: a small, fast speech synthesis engine
@subtitle System documentation
@subtitle Edition @value{EDITION}, for Flite version @value{VERSION}
@subtitle @value{UPDATED}
@author by Alan W Black and Kevin A. Lenzo
@page
@vskip 0pt plus 1filll
Copyright @copyright{} 2001-2014 Carnegie Mellon University, all rights
reserved.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission
notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions,
except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved
by the Carnegie Mellon University
@end titlepage
@node Top, , , (dir)
@menu
* Abstract:: initial comments
* Copying:: How you can copy and share the code
* Acknowledgements:: List of contributors
* Installation:: Compilation and Installation
* Flite Design::
* APIs:: Standard functions
* Converting FestVox Voices:: building flite voices from FestVox ones
@end menu
@node Abstract, Copying, , Top
@chapter Abstract
This document provides a user manual for flite, a small, fast
run-time speech synthesis engine.
This manual is nowhere near complete.
Flite offers text to speech synthesis in a small and efficient binary.
It is designed for embedded systems like PDAs as well large server
installation which must serve synthesis to many ports. Flite is part
of the suite of free speech synthesis tools which include Edinburgh
University's Festival Speech Synthesis System
@url{http://www.festvox.org/festival} and Carnegie
Mellon University's FestVox project @url{http://festvox.org}, which
provides tools, scripts, and documentation for building new synthetic
voices.
Flite is written in ANSI C, and is designed to be portable
to almost any platform, including very small hardware.
Flite is really just a synthesis library that can be linked into other
programs, it includes two simple voices with the distribution, an old
diphone voice and an example limited domain voice which uses the newer
unit selection techniques we have been developing. Neither of these
voices would be considered production voices but serve as examples, new
voices will be released as they are developed.
The latest versions, comments, new voices etc for Flite are available
from its home page which may be found at
@example
@url{http://cmuflite.org}
@end example
@node Copying, Acknowledgements, Abstract, Top
@chapter Copying
Flite is free software. It is distributed under an X11-like license.
Apart from the few exceptions noted below (which still have
similarly open licenses) the general license is
@example
Language Technologies Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Copyright (c) 1999-2014
All Rights Reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to use and distribute
this software and its documentation without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of this work, and to
permit persons to whom this work is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:
1. The code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of
conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Any modifications must be clearly marked as such.
3. Original authors' names are not deleted.
4. The authors' names are not used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written
permission.
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY AND THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS WORK
DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING
ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT
SHALL CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY NOR THE CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN
AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION,
ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF
THIS SOFTWARE.
@end example
@node Acknowledgements, Installation, Copying, Top
@chapter Acknowledgements
The initial development of flite was primarily done by awb while
travelling, perhaps the name is doubly appropriate as a substantial
amount of the coding was done over 30,000ft). During most of that
time awb was funded by the Language Technologies Institute at
Carnegie Mellon University.
Kevin A. Lenzo was involved in the design, conversion techniques and
representations for the voice distributed with flite (as well as being
the actual voice itself).
Other contributions are:
@itemize @bullet
@item Nagoya Institute of Technology
The MLSA, MLPG code comes directly NITECH's hts engine code, though we
have done some optimizations.
@item Marcela Charfuelan (DFKI)
For the mixed-excitation techniques (but no direct code). These
originally came from NITECH but we understood the techniques from
Marcela's Open Mary Java code and implemented them in our optimized
version of MLSA.
@item David Huggins-Daines:
much of the very early clunits code, porting to multiple platforms,
substantial code tidy up and configure/autoconf guidance (up to 2001).
@item Cepstral, LLC (@url{http://cepstral.com}):
For supporting DHD to spend time (in early 2001) on flite and passing
back the important fixes and enhancements while on a project funded by
the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) Praxis XXI
program specifically to produce an open source synthesizer.
@item Willie Walker <william.walker@@sun.com> and the Sun Speech Group:
lots of low level bugs (and fixes).
@item Henry Spencer:
For the regex code
@item University of Edinburgh:
for releasing Festival for free, making a companion runtime synthesizer
a practical project, much of the design of flite relies on the
architecture decisions made in the Festival Speech Synthesis Systems and
the Edinburgh Speech Tools.
The duration cart tree and intonation (accent and F0) models for the
US English voice were derived from the models in the Festival
distribution. which in turn were trained from the Boston University FM
Radio Data Corpus.
@item Carnegie Mellon University
The included lexicon is derived from CMULEX and the letter to sound
rules are constructed using the Lenzo and Black techniques for
building LTS decision graphs.
@item Craig Reese: IDA/Supercomputing Research Center and Joe Campbell: Department of Defense
who wrote the ulaw conversion routines in src/speech/cst_wave_utils.c
@end itemize
@node Installation, Flite Design, Acknowledgements, Top
@chapter Installation
Flite consist simple of a set of C files. GNU configure is
used to configure the engine and will work on most
major architectures.
In general, the following should build the system
@example
tar zxvf flite-XXX.tar.gz
cd flite-XXX
./configure
make
@end example
However you will need to explicitly call GNU make
@code{gmake} if @code{make} is not GNU make on your system.
The configuration process build a file @file{config/config} which under
some circumstances may need to be edited, e.g. to add unusual options or
dealing with cross compilation.
On Linux systems, we also support shared libraries which are useful for
keeping space down when multiple different application are linked to the
flite libraries. For development we strongly discourage use of shared
libraries as it is too easy to either not set them up correctly or
accidentally pick up the wrong version. But for installation they are
definitely encouraged. That is if you are just going to make and
install they are good but unless you know what @var{LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
does, it may be better to use static libraries (the default) if you are
changing C code or building your own voices.
@example
./configure --enable-shared
make
@end example
This will build both shared and static versions of the libraries but
will link the executables to the @emph{shared} libraries thus you will
need to install the libraries in a place that your dynamic linker will
find them (cf. /etc/ld.so.conf) or set @var{LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
appropriately.
@example
make install
@end example
Will install the binaries (@file{bin/flite*}), include files and
libraries in appropriate subdirectories of the defined install
directory, @file{/usr/local} by default. You can change this at configure
time with
@example
./configure --prefix=/opt
@end example
@section Windows Support
@section Window CE Support
@emph{NOTE: as Windows CE is somewhat rare now, we do not guarantee this
still works.}
Flite has been successfully compiled by a number of different groups
under Windows CE. The system should compile under Embedded Visual
Studio but we not have the full details.
The system as distributed does compile under the gcc @file{mingw32ce}
toolchain available from @url{http://cegcc.sourceforge.net/}. The
current version can be compiled and run under WinCE with a primitive
application called @file{flowm}. @file{flowm} is a simple application
that allows playing of typed-in text, or full text to speech on
a file. Files should be a simple ascii text files @code{*.txt}. The
application allows the setting of the byte position to start synthesis
from.
Assuming you have @file{mingw32ce} installed you can configure as
@example
./configure --target=arm-wince
make
@end example
The resulting binary is given in @file{wince/flowm.exe}. If you copy
this onto your Windows Mobile device and run it, it should allow you
to speak typed-in text and any @file{*.txt} files you have on your
device.
The application uses @code{cmu_us_kal} as the voice for default.
Although it is possible to include the clustergen voices, they may be
too slow to be really practical. An 8KHz clustergen voice with a
reduced order to 13 gives a voices that runs acceptably on an hp2755
(624MHz) but still marginal on an AT&T Tilt (400MHz).
Building 8KHz clustergen voices is currently a bit of hack. We take the
standard waveforms and resample them to 8KHz, then relabel the sample
rate to be 16KHz. Then build the voice as normal (as if the speaker
spoke twice as fast. You may need to have tune the F0 parameters in
@file{etc/f0.params}. This seems to basically work. Then after the
waveform is synthesized (still in the "chipmunk'' domain) we then
playit back at 8KHz. This effectively means we generate half the
number of samples and the frames are really at 10ms. A second
reduction is an option on the basic @file{build_flite} command. A
second argument can specify order reduction, thus instead of the
standard 25 static parameters (plus its deltas) we can reduce this to
13 and still get acceptable results
@example
./bin/build_flite cg 13
cd flite
make
@end example
Importantly this uses less space, and uses less time to synthesis.
These @code{SPEECH_HACKS} in @file{src/cg/cst_mlsa.c} are switched on
by default when @code{UNDER_CE} is defined.
The reduced order properly extracts the statics (and stddev) and
deltas (and stddev) from the predicted parameter clusters and makes it
as if those were the sizes of parameters that were used to the train
the voice.
@section PalmOS Support
@emph{NOTE: as PalmOS is somewhat rare now, we do not guarantee this
still works.}
Support for PalmOS was removed from 1.9, I no longer have any working
PalmOS devices. But this section remains for people who do, but they
may need to update something to make this work.
Starting with 1.3 we have initial support for PalmOS using the free
development tools. The compilation method assumes the target device
is running PalmOS 5.0 (or later) on an ARM processor. Following
convention in the Palm world, the app that the user interacts with is
actually a m68k application compiled with the m68 gcc cross compiler,
the resulting code is interpreted by the PalmOS 5.0 device. The core
flite code is in native ARM, and hence uses the ARM gcc cross
compiler. An interesting amout of support code is required to
get all this work properly.
The user app is called @code{flop} (FLite on Palm) and like most apps
written by awb, is functional, but ugly. You should not let a
short-sighted Scotsman, who still thinks command line interfaces are
cool, design a graphical app. But it does work and can read typed-in
text. The @file{armflite.ro} resources are designed with the idea
that proper applications will be written using it as a library.
The @file{flop.prc} application is distributed separately so it can be used
without having to install all these tools. But if you want to PalmOS
development here is what you need to do to compile Flite for PalmOS and
the flop application.
There are number of different application development environments for
Palm, here I only describe the Unix based one as this is what was
used. You will need the PalmOS SDK 5.0 from palmOne
@url{http://www.palmone.com/us/developers/}. This is
free but does require registration. Out of the lots of different
files you can get for palmOne you will eventually find
@file{palmos-sdk-5.0r3-1.noarch.rpm}, install that on your linux
machine
@example
rpm -i palmos-sdk-5.0r3-1.noarch.rpm
@end example
You will also need the various gcc based cross compilers
@url{http://prc-tools.sourceforge.net/}
@example
prc-tools-2.3-1.i386.rpm
prc-tools-arm-2.3-1.i386.rpm
prc-tools-htmldocs-2.3-1.noarch.rpm
@end example
The Palm Resource compiler
@url{http://pilrc.sourceforge.net/}
@example
pilrc-3.1-1.i386.rpm
@end example
And maybe the emulator
@url{http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/emulator/}
@example
pose-3.5-2.i386.rpm
pose-skins-1.9-1.noarch.rpm
pose-skins-handspring-3.1H4-1.noarch.rpm
@end example
Though as POSE doesn't support ARM code, @file{Simulator} does but
that only works under Windows, POSE is only useful for debugging the
m68k parts of the app.
Install these
@example
rpm -i prc-tools-2.3-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i prc-tools-arm-2.3-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i prc-tools-htmldocs-2.3-1.noarch.rpm
rpm -i pilrc-3.1-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i pose-3.5-2.i386.rpm
rpm -i pose-skins-1.9-1.noarch.rpm
rpm -i pose-skins-handspring-3.1H4-1.noarch.rpm
@end example
We also need the prc-tools to know which SDK is available
@example
palmdev-prep
@end example
In addition we use Greg Parker's PEAL
@url{http://www.sealiesoftware.com/peal/} ELF ARM loader. You need to
download this and compile and install it yourself, so that
@code{peal-postlink} is in your path. Greg was very helpful and even
added support for large data segments for this work (though in the end
we don't actually use them). Some peal code is in our distribution
(which is valid under his licence) but if you use a different version
of peal you may need to ensure they are matched, by updating
the peal code in @file{palm/}. We used version @file{peal-2004-12-29}.
The other palm specific function we require is @code{par}
@url{http://www.djw.org/product/palm/par/} which is part of the
@code{prc.tgz} distribution. We use @code{par} to construct resources
from raw binary files. There are other programs that can do this but
we found this one adequate. Again you must compile this and ensure
@code{par} is in your path. Note no part of @code{par} ends up
in the distributed system.
Given all of the above you should be able to compile the
Palm code and the @code{flop} application.
@example
./configure --target=arm-palmos
make
@end example
The resulting application should be in @file{palm/flop/flop.prc}
which can then be installed on your Plam device
@example
pilot-xfer -i palm/flop/flop.prc
@end example
Setting up the tools, and getting a working Linux/Palm conduit is not
particularly easy but it is possible. Although some attempt was made
to use the Simulator, (PalmOS 5.0/ARM simulator) under Windows, it
never really contributed to the development. The POSE (m68k) emulator
though was use to develop the @code{flop} application itself.
@subsection Some notes on the PalmOS port
Throughout the PalmOS developer documentation they continually remind
you that a Palm device is not a full computer, its an extention of the
desktop. But seeing devices like the Treo 600 can easily make one
forget and want the device to do real computational work. PalmOS is
designed for small light weight devices so it is easy to start hitting
the boundaries of its capabilities when trying to port larger
aplications.
PalmOS5.0 still has interesting limitations, in the m68k domain,
@code{int}'s are 16 bit and using memory segments greater than 65K
require special work. Quaint as these are, they do significantly
affect the port. At first we thought that only the key
computationally expensive parts would be in ARM (so-called
@code{armlets}) but trying to compile the whole flite code in m68k
with long/short distinctions and sub-64K code segment limitations was
just too hard.
Thus all the Flite code, USEnglish, Lexicon and diphone databases
actually are compiled in the ARM domain. There is however no system
support in the ARM domain so call backs to m68k system functions are
necessary. With care calls to system functions can be significantly
limited so only a few call backs needed to be written. These are in
@file{palm/pocore/}. I believe CodeWarrior has better support for
this, but in this case we rolled our own (though help from other open
source examples was important).
We manage the m68k/ARM interface through PEAL, which is basically a
linker for ARM code and calling mechanism from m68k. PEAL deals with
globals and spliting the code into 65K chunks automatically.
Flite does however have a number of large data segments, in the
lexicon and the voice database itself. PEAL can deal with this but it
loads large segments by copying them into the dynamic heap, which on
most Palm device is less than 2M. This isn't big enough.
Thus we changed Flite to restrict the number of large data sgements it
used (and also did some new compression on them). The five segments: the
lts rules, the lexical entries, the voice LPC coefficients, the voice
residuals and the voice residual index are now treated a data segments
that are split into 65400 sized segments and loaded into feature
memory space, which is in the storage heap and typically much bigger.
This means we do need about 2-3 megabyte free on the device to run.
We did look into just indexing the 65400 byte segments directly but
that looked like being too much work, and we're only going to be able
to run on 16M sized Palms anyway (there aren't any 8M ARM Palms with
audio, expect maybe some SmartPhones).
Using Flite from m68k land involves getting a @code{flite_info}
structure from @code{flite_init()}. This contains a bunch of fields
that be set and sent to the ARM domain Flite synthesizer proper within
which other output fields may be set and returned. This isn't a very
general structure, but is adequate. Note the necessary byte swapping
(for the top level fileds) is done for the this structure, before
calling the ARM native @code{arm_flite_synth_text} and swapped back
again after returning.
Display, playing audio, pointy-clicky event thingies are all done in
the m68K domain.
@subsection Using the PalmOS
There are three basic functions that access the ARM flite
functions: @code{flite_init()}, @code{flite_synth_text()} and
@code{flite_end()}.
@node Flite Design, APIs, Installation, Top
@chapter Flite Design
@section Background
Flite was primarily developed to address one of the most common
complaints about the Festival Speech Synthesis System. Festival is
large and slow, even with the software bloat common amongst most
products and that that bloat has helped machines get faster, have more
memory and large disks, still Festival is criticized for its size.
Although sometimes this complaint is unfair, it is valid and although
much work was done to ensure Festival can be trimmed and run fast it
still requires substantial resources per utterance to run. After some
investigation to see if Festival itself could be trimmed down it became
clear because there was a core set of functions that were sufficient for
synthesis that a new implementation containing only those aspects that
were necessary would be easier than trimming down Festival itself.
Given that a new implementation was being considered a number of
problems with Festival could also be addressed at the same time.
Festival is not thread-safe, and although it runs under Windows, in
server mode it relies on the Unix-centric view of fast forks with
copy-on-write shared memory for servicing clients. This is a perfectly
safe and practical solution for Unix systems, but under Windows where
threads are the more common feature used for servicing multiple events
and forking is expensive, a non-thread safe program can't be used as
efficiently.
Festival is written in C++ which was a good decision at the time and
perfectly suitable for a large program. However what was discovered
over the years of development is that C++ is not a portable language.
Different C++ compilers are quite different and it takes significant
amount of work to ensure compatibility of the code base over multiple
compilers. What makes this worse is that new versions of each compiler
are incompatible and changes are required. At first this looked like we
were producing bad quality code but after 10 years it is clear that it is
also that the compilers are still maturing. Thus it is clear that
Festival and the Edinburgh Speech Tools will continue to require
constant support as new versions of compilers are released.
A second problem with C++ is the size and efficiency of the code
produced. Proponents of C++ may rightly argue that Festival and the
Edinburgh Speech Tools aren't properly designed, but irrespective if
that is true or not, it is true that the size of the code is much larger
and slower than it need be for what it does. Throughout the design
there is a constant trade-off between elegancy and efficiency which
unfortunately at times in Festival requires untidy solutions of
copying data out of objects processing it and copying back because
direct access (particularly in some signal processing routines)
is just too inefficient.
Another major criticism of Festival is the use of Scheme as the
interpreter language. Even though it is a simple to implement language
that is adequate for Festival's needs and can be easily included in the
distribution, people still hate it. Often these people do learn to use
it and appreciate how run time configurability is very desirable and that
new voices may be added without recompilation. Scheme does have garbage
collection which makes leaky programs much harder to write and as some
of the intended audience for developing in Festival will not be hard
core programmers a safe programming language seems very desirable.
After taking into consideration all of the above it was decided to
develop Flite as a new system written in ANSI C. C is much more
portable than C++ as well as offering much lower level control of the
size of the objects and data structure it uses.
Flite is not intended as a research and development platform for speech
synthesis, Festival is and will continue to be the best platform for
that. Flite however is designed as a run-time engine when an
application needs to be delivered. It specifically addresses two
communities. First as a engine for small devices such as PDAs and
telephones where the memory and CPU power are limited and in some cases do
not even have a conventional operating system.
The second community is for those running synthesis servers for many
clients. Here although large fixed databases are acceptable, the size
of memory required per utterance and speed in which they can be
synthesized is crucial.
However in spite of the decision to build a new synthesis engine we see
this as being tightly coupled into the existing free software synthesis
tools or Festival and the FestVox voice building suite. Flite offers
a companion run-time engine. Our intended mode of development is
to build new voices in FestVox and debug and tune them in Festival.
Then for deployment the FestVox format voice may be (semi-)automatically
compiled into a form that can be used by Flite.
In case some people feel that development of a small run-time
synthesizer is not an appropriate thing to do within a University and is
more suited to commercial development, we have a few points which they
should be aware of that to our mind justify this work.
We have long felt that research in speech and language should have an
identifiable link to ultimate commercial use. In providing a platform
that can be used in consumer products that falls within the same
framework as our research we can better understand what research issues
are actually important to the improvement our work.
In considering small useful synthesizers it forces a more explicit
definition of what is necessary in a synthesizer and also how we can
trade size, flexibility and speed with the quality of synthesized
output. Defining that relationship is a research issue.
We are also advocates of speech technology within other research areas
and the ability to offer support on new platforms such as PDAs and
wearables allows for more interesting speech applications such as
speech-to-speech translation, robots, and interactive personal digital
assistants, that will prove new and interesting areas of research.
Thus having a platform that others around us can more easily integrate
into their research makes our work more satisfying.
@section Key Decisions
The basic architecture of Festival is good. It is well proven. Paul
Taylor, Alan W. Black and Richard Caley spent many hours debating low
level aspects of representation and structure that would both be
adequate for current theories but also allow for future theories too.
The heterogeneous relation graphs (HRG) are theoretically adequate,
computationally efficient and well proven. Thus both because HRGs have
such a background and that Flite is to be compatible with voices and
models developed in Festival, Flite uses HRGs as its basic utterance
representation structure.
Most of a synthesizer is in its data (lexicons, unit database etc),
the actual synthesis code is pretty small. In Festival most of that
data exists in external files which are loaded on demand. This is
obviously slow and memory expensive (you need both a copy on the data
on disk and in memory). As one of the principal targets for Flite is
very small machines we wanted to allow that core data to be in ROM,
and be appropriately mapped into RAM without any explicit loading
(some OS's call this XIP -- execute in place). This can be done by
various memory mapping functions (in Unix its called mmap) and is the
core technique used in shared libraries (called DLLs in some parts of
the world). Thus the data should be in a format that it can be
directly accessed. If you are going to directly access data you need
to ensure the byte layout is appropriate for the architecture you are
running on, byte order and address width become crucial if you want to
avoid any extra conversion code at access time (like byte swapping).
At first is was considered that synthesis data would be converted in
binary files which could be mmap'ed into the runtime systems but
building appropriate binaries files for architectures is quite a job.
However the C compiler does this in a standard way. Therefore the mode
of operation for data within Flite is to convert it to C code (actually
C structures) and use the C compiler to generate the appropriate binary
structures.
Using the C compiler is a good portable solution but it as these
structures can be very big this can tax the C compiler somewhat. Also
because this data is not going to change at run time it can all be
declared @code{const}. Which means (in Unix) it will be in the text
segment and hence read only (this can be ROM on platforms which have
that distinction). For structures to be const all their subparts
must also be const thus all relevant parts must be in the same file,
hence the unit databases files can be quite big.
Of course, this all presumes that you have a C compiler robust enough to
compile these files, hardware smart enough to treat flash ROM as memory
rather than disk, or an operating system smart enough to demand-page
executables. Certain "popular" operating systems and compilers fail in
at least one of these respects, and therefore we have provided the
flexibility to use memory-mapped file I/O on voice databases, where
available, or simply to load them all into memory.
@chapter Structure
The flite distribution consists of two distinct parts:
@itemize @bullet
@item The flite library containing the core synthesis code
@item Voice(s) for flite. These contain three sub-parts
@itemize @bullet
@item Language models:
text processing, prosody models etc.
@item Lexicon and letter to sound rules
@item Unit database and voice definition
@end itemize
@end itemize
@section cst_val
This is a basic simple object which can contain ints, floats, strings
and other objects. It also allows for lists using the Scheme/Lisp,
car/cdr architecture (as that is the most efficient way to represent
arbitrary trees and lists).
The @code{cst_val} structure is carefully designed to take up only 8 bytes (or
16 on a 64-bit machine). The multiple union structure that it can
contain is designed so there are no conflicts. However it depends on
the fact that a pointer to a @code{cst_val} is guaranteed to lie on a even
address boundary (which is true for all architectures I know of). Thus
the distinction between between cons (i.e. list) objects and atomic
values can be determined by the odd/evenness of the least significant bits
of the first address in a @code{cst_val}. In some circles this is considered
hacky, in others elegant. This was done in flite to ensure that the most
common structure is 8 bytes rather than 12 which saves significantly on
memory.
All @code{cst_val}'s except those of type cons are reference counted. A
few functions generate new lists of @code{cst_val}'s which the user
should be careful about as they need to explicitly delete them (notably
the lexicon lookup function that returns a list of phonemes).
Everything that is added to an utterance will be deleted (and/or
dereferenced) when the utterance is deleted.
Like Festival, user types can be added to the @code{cst_val}s. In
Festival this can be done on the fly but because this requires the
updating of some list when each new type is added, this wouldn't be
thread safe. Thus an explicit method of defining user types is done in
@file{src/utils/cst_val_user.c}. This is not as neat as defining on the
fly or using a registration function but it is thread safe and these
user types won't change often.
@node APIs, Converting FestVox Voices, Flite Design, Top
@chapter APIs
Flite is a library that we expected will be embedded into other
applications. Included with the distribution is a small example
executable that allows synthesis of strings of text and text files
from the command line.
You may want to look at Bard @file{http://festvox.org/bard/}, an ebook
reader with a tight coupling to flite as a synthesizer. This is the
most elaborate use of the Flite API within our suite of programs.
@section flite binary
The example flite binary may be suitable for very simple applications.
Unlike Festival its start up time is very short (less than 25ms on a PIII
500MHz) making it practical (on larger machines) to call it each
time you need to synthesize something.
@example
flite TEXT OUTPUTTYPE
@end example
If @code{TEXT} contains a space it is treated as a string of text and
converted to speech, if it does not contain a space @code{TEXT} is
treated as a file name and the contents of that file are converted to
speech. The option @code{-t} specifies @code{TEXT} is to be treat
as text (not a filename) and @code{-f} forces treatment as a file.
Thus
@example
flite -t hello
@end example
will say the word "hello" while
@example
flite hello
@end example
will say the content of the file @file{hello}. Likewise
@example
flite "hello world."
@end example
will say the words "hello world" while
@example
flite -f "hello world"
@end example
will say the contents of a file @file{hello world}. If no argument is
specified text is read from standard input.
The second argument @code{OUTPUTTYPE} is the name of a file the output
is written to, or if it is @code{play} then it is played to the audio
device directly. If it is @code{none} then the audio is created but
discarded, this is used for benchmarking. If it is @code{stream} then
the audio is streamed through a call back function (though this is not
particularly useful in the command line version. If @code{OUTPUTTYPE}
is omitted, @code{play} is assumed. You can also explicitly set the
outputtype with the @code{-o} flag.
@example
flite -f doc/alice -o alice.wav
@end example
@section Voice selection
All the voices in the distribution are collected into a single simple
list in the global variable @code{flite_voice_list}. You can select a
voice from this list from the command line
@example
flite -voice awb -f doc/alice -o alice.wav
@end example
And list which voices are currently supported in the binary with
@example
flite -lv
@end example
The voices which get linked together are those listed in the
@code{VOICES} in the @file{main/Makefile}. You can change that as you
require.
Voices may also be dynamically loaded from files as well as built in.
The argument to the @code{-voice} option may be pathname to a dumped
(Clustergen) voice. This may be a Unix pathname or a URL (only protocols @file{http} and @file{file} are supported. For example
@example
flite -voice file://cmu_us_awb.flitevox -f doc/alice -o alice.wav
flite -voice http://festvox.org/voices/cmu_us_ksp.flitevox -f doc/alice -o alice.wav
@end example
Voices will be loaded once and added to @code{flite_voice_list}.
Although these voices are often small (a few megabytes) there will
still be some time required to read them in the first time. The
voices are not mapped, they are read into newly created structures.
This loading function is currently only supported for Clustergen
voices.
@section C example
Each voice in Flite is held in a structure, a pointer to which is
returned by the voice registration function. In the standard
distribution, the example diphone voice is @code{cmu_us_kal}.
Here is a simple C program that uses the flite library
@example
#include "flite.h"
cst_voice * register_cmu_us_kal(const char *voxdir);
int main(int argc, char **argv)
@{
cst_voice *v;
if (argc != 2)
@{
fprintf(stderr,"usage: flite_test FILE\n");
exit(-1);
@}
flite_init();
v = register_cmu_us_kal(NULL);
flite_file_to_speech(argv[1],v,"play");
@}
@end example
Assuming the shell variable FLITEDIR is set to the flite directory
the following will compile the system (with appropriate changes for
your platform if necessary).
@example
gcc -Wall -g -o flite_test flite_test.c -I$FLITEDIR/include -L$FLITEDIR/lib
-lflite_cmu_us_kal -lflite_usenglish -lflite_cmulex -lflite -lm
@end example
@section Public Functions
Although, of course you are welcome to call lower level functions,
there a few key functions that will satisfy most users
of flite.
@table @code
@item void flite_init(void);
This must be called before any other flite function can be called. As
of Flite 1.1, it actually does nothing at all, but there is no guarantee
that this will remain true.
@item cst_wave *flite_text_to_wave(const char *text,cst_voice *voice);
Returns a waveform (as defined in @file{include/cst_wave.h}) synthesized
from the given text string by the given voice.
@item float flite_file_to_speech(const char *filename, cst_voice *voice, const char *outtype);
synthesizes all the sentences in the file @file{filename} with given
voice. Output (at present) can only reasonably be, @code{play} or
@code{none}. If the feature @code{file_start_position} with an
integer, that point is used as start position in the file to be synthesized.
@item float flite_text_to_speech(const char *text, cst_voice *voice, const char *outtype);
synthesizes the text in string point to by @code{text}, with the given
voice. @code{outtype} may be a filename where the generated waveform is
written to, or "play" and it will be sent to the audio device, or
"none" and it will be discarded. The return value is the
number of seconds of speech generated.
@item cst_utterance *flite_synth_text(const char *text,cst_voice *voice);
synthesize the given text with the given voice and returns an utterance
from it for further processing and access.
@item cst_utterance *flite_synth_phones(const char *phones,cst_voice *voice);
synthesize the given phones with the given voice and returns an utterance
from it for further processing and access.
@item cst_voice *flite_voice_select(const char *name);
returns a pointer to the voice named @code{name}. Will retrurn
@code{NULL} if there is not match, if @code{name == NULL} then the
first voice in the voice list is returned. If @code{name} is a url
(starting with @file{file:} or @file{http:}, that file will be
accessed and the voice will be downloaded from there.
@item float flite_ssml_file_to_speech(const char *filename, cst_voice *voice, const char *outtype);
Will read the file as ssml, not all ssml tags are supported but many
are, unsupported ones are ignored. Voice selection works by naming
the internal name of the voice, or the name may be a url and the voice
will be loaded. The audio tag is supported for loading waveform files, again urls are supported.
@item float flite_ssml_text_to_speech(const char *text, cst_voice *voice, const char *outtype);
Will treat the text as ssml.
@item int flite_voice_add_lex_addenda(cst_voice *v, const cst_string *lexfile);
loads the pronunciations from @code{lexfile} into the lexicon
identified in the given voice (which will cause all other voices using
that lexicon to also get this new addenda list. An example lexicon
file is given in @file{flite/tools/examples.lex}. Words may be in
double quotes, an optional part of speech tag may be give. A colon
separates the headword/postag from the list of phonemes. Stress
values (if used in the lexicon) must be specified. Bad phonemes will
be complained about on standard out.
@end table
@section Streaming Synthesis
In 1.4 support was added for streaming synthesis. Basically you may
provide a call back function that will be called with waveform data
immediately when it is available. This potentially can reduce the
delay between sending text to the synthesized and having audio
available.
The support is through a call back function of type
@example
int audio_stream_chunk(const cst_wave *w, int start, int size,
int last, cst_audio_streaming_info *asi)
@end example
If the utterance feature @code{streaming_info} is set (which can
be set in a voice or in an utterance). The LPC or MLSA resynthesis
functions will call the provided function as buffers become available.
The LPC and MLSA waveform synthesis functions are used for diphones,
limited domain, unit selection and clustergen voices. Note explicit
support is required for streaming so new waveform synthesis function
may not have the functionality.
An example streaming function is provided in
@file{src/audio/au_streaming.c} and is used by the example flite main
program when @code{stream} is given as the playing option. (Though in
the command line program the function it isn't really useful.)
In order to use streaming you must provide call back function in your
particular thread. This is done by adding features to the voice in
your thread. Suppose your function was declared as
@example
int example_audio_stream_chunk(const cst_wave *w, int start, int size,
int last, void *user)
@end example
You can add this function as the streaming function through the statement
@example
cst_audio_streaming_info *asi;
...
asi = new_audio_streaming_info();
asi->asc = example_audio_stream_chunk;
feat_set(voice->features,
"streaming_info",
audio_streaming_info_val(asi));
@end example
You may also optionally include your own pointer to any information
you additionally want to pass to your function. For example
@example
typedef my_callback_struct @{
cst_audiodev *fd;
int count;
@};
cst_audio_streaming_info *asi;
...
mcs = cst_alloc(my_callback_struct,1);
mcs->fd=NULL;
mcs->count=1;
asi = new_audio_streaming_info();
asi->asc = example_audio_stream_chunk;
asi->userdata = mcs;
feat_set(voice->features,
"streaming_info",
audio_streaming_info_val(asi));
@end example
Another example is given in @file{testsuite/by_word_main.c} which
shows a call back funtion that also prints the token as it is being
synthesized. The @file{utt} field in the
@file{cst_audio_streaming_info} structure will be set to the current
utterance. Please note that the @file{item} field in the
@file{cst_audio_streaming_info} structure is for your convenience and
is not set by anyone at all. The previous sentence exists in the
documentation so that I can point at it, when user's fail to read it.
@node Converting FestVox Voices, , APIs, top
@chapter Converting FestVox Voices
As of 1.2 initial scripts have been added to aid the conversion of
FestVox voices to Flite. In general the conversion cannot be automatic.
For example all specific Scheme code written for a voice needs to be
hand converted to C to work in Flite, this can be a major task.
Simple conversion scripts are given as examples of the stages you need
to go through. These are designed to work on standard (English)
diphone sets, and simple limited domain voices. The conversion
technique will almost certainly fail for large unit selection voices
due to limitations in the C compiler (more discussion below). In 1.4
we have also added support for converting clustergen voices too (which
is a little easier, see section below).
@section Cocantenative Voice Building
Conversion is basically taking the description of units (clunit
catalogue or diphone index) and constructing some C files that can be
compiled to form a usable database. Using the C compiler to generate
the object files has the advantage that we do not need to worry about
byte order, alignment and object formats as the C compiler for the
particular target platform should be able to generate the right code.
Before you start ensure you have successfully built and run your FestVox
voice in Festival. Flite is not designed as a voice building/debugging
tool it is just a delivery vehicle for finalized voices so you should
first ensure you are satisfied with the quality of Festival voices
before you start converting it for Flite.
The following basic stages are required:
@itemize @bullet
@item Setup the directories and copy the conversion scripts
@item Build the LPC files
@item Build the MCEP files (for ldom/clunits)
@item Convert LPC (MCEP) into STS (short term signal) files
@item Convert the catalogue/diphone index
@item Compile the generated C code
@end itemize
The conversion assumes the environment variable @code{FLITEDIR}
is set, for example
@example
export FLITEDIR=/home/awb/projects/flite/
@end example
The basic flite conversion takes place within a FestVox voice directory.
Thus all of the conversion scripts expect that the standard files are
available. The first task is to build some new directories and copy in
the build scripts. The scripts are copied rather than linked from the
Flite directories as you may need to change these for your particular
voices.
@example
$FLITEDIR/tools/setup_flite
@end example
This will read @file{etc/voice.defs}, which should have been created by
the FestVox build process (except in very old versions of FestVox).
If you don't have a @file{etc/voice.defs} you can construct one
with @code{festvox/src/general/guess_voice_defs} in the Festvox
distribution, or generate one by hand making it look
like
@example
FV_INST=cmu
FV_LANG=us
FV_NAME=ked_timit
FV_TYPE=clunits
FV_VOICENAME=$FV_INST"_"$FV_LANG"_"$FV_NAME
FV_FULLVOICENAME=$FV_VOICENAME"_"$FV_TYPE
@end example
The main script build building the Flite voice is @file{bin/build_flite}
which will eventually build sufficient C code in @file{flite/} that can
be compiled with the constructed @file{flite/Makefile} to give you a
library that can be linked into applications and also an example
@file{flite} binary with the constructed voice built-in.
You can run all of these stages, except the final make, together by
running the the build script with no arguments
@example
./bin/build_flite
@end example
But as things may not run smoothly, we will go through the
stages explicitly.
The first stage is to build the LPC files, this may have already been
done as part of the diphone building process (though probably not in
the ldom/clunit case). In our experience it is very important that the
records be of similar power, as mis-matched power can often cause
overflows in the resulting flite (and sometimes Festival) voices. Thus,
for diphone voices, it is important to run the power normalization
techniques described int he FestVox document. The Flite LPC build
process also builds a parameter file of the ranges of the LPC parameters
used in later coding of the files, so even if you have already built your
LPC files you should still do this again
@example
./bin/build_flite lpc
@end example
For ldom, and clunit voices (but not for diphone voices) we also
need the Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients. These are assumed to
have been cleared and are in @file{mcep/} as they are necessary
for running the voice in Festival. This stage simply constructs
information about the range of the mcep parameters.
@example
./bin/build_flite mcep
@end example
The next stage is to construct the STS files. Short Term Signals (STS)
are built for each pitch period in the database. These are ascii files
(one for each utterance file in the database, with LPC coefficients, and
ulaw encoded residuals for each pitch period. These are built using a
binary executable built as part of the Flite build
(@file{flite/tools/find_sts}.
@example
./bin/build_flite sts
@end example
Note that the flite code expects waveform files to be in Microsoft RIFF
format and cannot deal with files in other formats. Some earlier
versions of the Edinburgh Speech Tools used NIST as the default header
format. This is likely to cause flite and its related programs not
work. So do ensure your waveform files are in riff format (ch_wave -info
wav/* will tell you the format). And the following fill convert
all your wave files
@example
mv wav wav.nist
mkdir wav
cd wav.nist
for i in *.wav
do
ch_wave -otype riff -o ../wav/$i $i
done
@end example
The next stage is to convert the index to the required C format. For
diphone voices this takes the @file{dic/*.est} index files, for
clunit/ldom voices it takes the @file{festival/clunit/VOICE.catalogue}
and @file{festival/trees/VOICE.tree} files. This process uses a binary
executable built as part of the Flite build process
(@file{flite/tools/flite_sort}) to sort the indices into the same
sorting order required for flite to run. (Using unix sort may or may
not give the same result due to definitions of lexicographic order so
we use the very same function in C that will be used in flite to ensure
that a consistent order is given.)
@example
./bin/build_flite idx
@end example
All the necessary C files should now have been built in @file{flite/}
and you may compile them by
@example
cd flite
make
@end example
This should give a library and an executable called @file{flite} that
can run as
@example
./flite "Hello World"
@end example
Assuming a general voice. For ldom voices it will only be able to say
things in its domain. This @file{flite} binary offers the same options
as standard the standard @file{flite} binary compiled in the Flite build
but with your voice rather than the distributed voices.
Almost certainly this process will not run smoothly for you. Building
voices is still a very hard thing to do and problems will probably
exist.
This build process does not deal with customization for the given
voices. Thus you will need to edit @file{flite/VOICE.c} to set
intonation ranges and duration stretch for your particular voice.
For example in our @file{cmu_us_sls_diphone} voice (a US English female
diphone voice). We had to change the default parameters from
@example
feat_set_float(v->features,"int_f0_target_mean",110.0);
feat_set_float(v->features,"int_f0_target_stddev",15.0);
feat_set_float(v->features,"duration_stretch",1.0);
@end example
to
@example
feat_set_float(v->features,"int_f0_target_mean",167.0);
feat_set_float(v->features,"int_f0_target_stddev",25.0);
feat_set_float(v->features,"duration_stretch",1.0);
@end example
Note this conversion is limited. Because it depends on the C compiler
to do the final conversion into binary object format (a good idea in
general for portability), you can easily generate files too big for the
C compiler to deal with. We have spent some time investigating this
so the largest possible voices can be converted but it is still too
limited for our larger voices. In general the limitation seems to be
best quantified by the number of pitch periods in the database. After
about 100k pitch periods the files get too big to handle. There are
probably solutions to this but we have not yet investigated them. This
limitation doesn't seem to be an issue with the diphone voices as they
are typically much smaller than unit selection voices.
@section Statistical Voice Building (Clustergen)
The process of building from a clustergen (cg) voice is also
supported. It is assumed the environment variable @code{FLITEDIR} is
set
@example
export FLITEDIR=/home/awb/projects/flite/
@end example
After you build the clustergen voice you can convert by first setting
up the skeleton files in the @file{flite/} directory
@example
$FLITEDIR/tools/setup_flite
@end example
Assuming @file{etc/voice.defs} properly identifies the voice the cg
templates will be compied in.
The conversion itself is actually much faster than a clunit build
(there is less to actually convert).
@example
./bin/build_flite cg
@end example
Will convert then necessary models into files in the @file{flite/}
directory. The you can compile it with
@example
cd flite
make
./flite_cmu_us_awb "Hello world"
@end example
Note that the voice that is to be converted *must* be a standard
clustergen voice with f0, mceps, delta mceps (optionally strengths for
mixed excitation) and voicing in its
combined coeffs files. The method could be changed to deal with other
possibilities but it will only work for default build method.
The generated library @file{libflite_cmu_us_awb.a} may be linked with
other programs like any other flite voice. The binary generated
@code{flite_cmu_us_awb} links in only one voice (unlike the flite binary in
the full flite distribution.
A single flat file contain the cg voice can also be generated that can
be loaded at run time into the flite binary. You can dump this file
from the initial constructed flite binary
@example
./flite_cmu_us_awb -voicedump cmu_us_awb.flitevox
@end example
The file cmu_us_awb.flitevox may now be references (with pathname/url) on
the flite command line and used by the synthesizer
@example
./flite -voice cmu_us_awb.flitevox "Hello World"
@end example
@section Lexicon Conversion
As of 1.3 the script for converting the CMU lexicon (as distributed as
part of Festival) is included. @file{make_cmulex} will use the
version of CMULEX unpacked in the current directory to build a new
lexicon. Also in 1.3. a more sophisticated compression technique is
used to reduce the lexicon size. The lexicon is pruned, removing
those words which the letter to sound rule models get correct. Also
the letters and phones are separately huffman coded to produce a
smaller lexicon.
@section Language Conversion
This is by far the weakest part as this is the most open ended. There
are basic tools in the @file{flite/tools/} directory that include Scheme
code to convert various Scheme structures to C include CART tree
conversion and Lisp list conversion. The other major source of help
here is the existing language examples in @file{flite/lang/usenglish/}.
Adding new language support is far from automatic, but there are core
scripts for setting up new Flite support for languages and lexicons. There
are also scripts for converting (Festival) phoneset definitions to C
and converting Festival lexicons to LTS rules and compressed lexicons
in C.
But beyond that you are sort of on your own. The largest gap here is
text normalization. We do not yet have a standardize model for text
normalization with well definied models for which we could write
conversion scripts.
However here is a step by step attempt to show you what to do when
building support for a new language/lexicon.
Suppose we need to create support for Pashto, and already have a
festival voice running, and want it now to run in flite. Converting
the voice itself (unitselction or clustergen) is fairly robust, but
you will also need C libraries for @file{cmu_pashto_lang} and
@file{cmu_pasho_lex}. The first stage is to create the basic
temple files for these. In the core @file{flite/} source directory
type
@example
./tools/make_new_lang_lex pashto
@end example
This will create language and lex template files in
@file{lang/cmu_pashto_lang/'} and @file{cmu_pashto_lex}.
Then in firectory @file{lang/cmu_pashto_lang/} type
@example
festival $FLITEDIR/tools/make_phoneset.scm
...
festival> (phonesettoC "cmu_pashto" (car (load "PATHTO/cmu_pashto_transtac_phoneset.scm" t)) "pau" ".")
@end example
This will create @file{cmu_pashto_lang_phoneset.[ch]}. You must the add these
explicitly to the @file{Makefile}.
Then in @file{lang/cmu_pashto_lex/} you have to build the C version of
the lexicon and letter to sound rules. The core script is in
@file{flite/tools/build_lex}.
@example
mkdir lex
cd lex
cp -p $FLITEDIR/tooks/build_lex .
@end example
Edit build_lex to give it the name of your lexicon name, and compiled
lexicon from your voice.
@example
LEXNAME=cmu_pashto
LEXFILE=lexicon.out
@end example
You should (I think) remove the first line ``MNCL'' from your
@file{lexicon.out} file, note this @emph{must} be the compiled lexicon
not the list of entries you compiled from as it expects the ordering, and
the syllabification.
@example
./build_lex setup
@end example
Build the letter to sound rules (probably again)
@example
./build_lex lts
@end example
Convert the compiled letter to sound rules to C. This converts the
decision trees to decision graphs and runs WFST minimization of them
to get a more efficient set of structures. This puts the generated C
files in @file{c/}.
@example
./build_lex lts2c
@end example
Now convert the lexical entries themselves
@example
./build_lex lex
@end example
Again the generate C files will be put in @file{c/}.
Now we generated a Huffman codes compressed lexicon to reduce the
lexicon size, merging frequent letter sequences and phone sequences.
@example
./build_lex compresslex
@end example
The copy the @file{.c} and @file{.h} files to @file{lang/cmu_pashto_lex/}
[something about compressed and non-compressed???]
@chapter Porting to new platforms
byte order, unions, compiler restrictions
@chapter Future developments
@contents
@bye