Mbrola package -------------- The mbrola package provides the code part of the mbrola speech synthesizer. To make it work, you need to install voice packages according to the desired languages and quality, these are called mbrola-xyn where xyn is the mbrola voice identifier, the same as in the upstream database: http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/ Voice packages also provide the virtual package mbrola-voice- where is the iso code of the language), and sometimes also mbrola-voice-- where the additional is the territory of the language. Since mbrola only synthesizes wave speech from phonemes, you also need a text to phoneme converter, such as espeak or cicero, and a player such as sox. For instance, to use the us1 voice from the mbrola-us1 package, you can run echo 'Hello, world!' | espeak -v mb-us1 --stdin | mbrola -e /usr/share/mbrola/us1/us1 - -.au | play -t .au - To make use of mbrola along espeak in speech-dispatcher, enable the espeak-mbrola-generic module by uncommenting the corresponding line in /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf Not all mbrola voices are packaged, because they take a lot of space and require text to phoneme support. If you need to package a particular mbrola voice, you can probably just use the debian/mbrola-voice-package-generate script from the /usr/share/doc/mbrola/examples. Note: the amd64 package ships a 32bit binary, because the said-to-be-64 bit version on the mbrola site actually is 32bit and does not work at all. Users who compile their own kernel should thus make sure to enable CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION. -- Samuel Thibault Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:42:38 +0200