Re: [orca-list] eSpeak, Speech-dispatcher, Orca and voice variations in Gutsy

[Jonathan Duddington <jonsd jsd clara co uk>]

On 20 Nov, Hermann <meinelisten onlinehome de> wrote:
> Male and feemale voices seem not to be implemented in Espeak, I
> cannot find them in the espeak.conf, however in espeak-generic.conf;
> but I couldn't change them too. The only feemale voices I found in
> Espeak stand-allone were mbrola-voices, but one has to install
> mbrola and the language databases in order to use it.

eSpeak makes "female" voices by changing some synthesis parameters. 
These are contained in "Voice variant" files (in espeak-data/voices/!v).

Add the variant name to the voice name, eg. "en+f2" is a female version
of the "en" voice.  Voice variants can be used with any language.

So:
  espeak -v en+f2 "hello world"

should speak with a female voice, or at least a higher pitch voice,
whether it sounds female probably depends on how good is your
imagination.

Versions eSpeak which are earlier than version 1.29 use a number rather
than a name for the voice variant.

  espeak -v en+12 "hello world"

Male and female variants are:
  m1  m2  m3  m4  m5   f1  f2  f3  f4

(or for older versions of eSpeak, 
  1  2  3  4  5  11  12  13  14 )

Other voice variants in eSpeak 1.29 are "croak" and "wisper".