Speech Synthesis For Rio

Has anyone on here ever talked about speech synthesis for the Rio. I know they have some Linux text to speech systems with various APIs.
I have noticed that the Neo Car Jukebox has a Voice Module Chip that you can replace. http://www.mteweb.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MTE&Product_Code=Neo+CJ+Voice+module&Category_Code=CMP

Just Wondering If anyone has thought about it or tried it?

Do a search on it, there are 2 or 3 threads on this. There wasn't a whole lot of interest in it. Want to throw something together for us to try?

Here is a thread with some of my progress on text-to-speech. In summary, I've amassed a collection of utilities which, when combined, can perform servicable text-to-speech on the Empeg. It doesn't sound like the passenger next to you is talking, but it's understandable speech, certainly good enough for many applications.

However, these apps need to be all glued together. I have an "action item" to email the author of the speech synthesis package and see if he can do something about adding some code to handle the Empeg's quirky soundcard requirements natively, this would be the best solution. If he can't do that, then we need to glue together the sample rate conversion and muck with the sound driver code ourselves. I don't think I'm capable of that kind of coding right now, so I posted the aforementioned thread, and nobody seemed really interested in making it happen.

Anyway, I will try to get back in touch with the Flite author and see if he would be nice enough to add Empeg support, or see what it would take to twist his arm into doing it.

It's not a voice module chip; the software CD contains some text to speech software that puts mp3 files of the speech on the neo's hard disk, and the chip is a new ROM which makes the player play these mp3 files as you browse around the menus.

At least, that's what it looks like.

We've had plans for a long time in this department, including "voice fonts" (special playlist with the tts samples in it, allowing people to customise their voice prompting for preset strings, eg menu items). Some of our OEM products have more advanced voice interfaces, but I can't say more than that

Hugo

Some of our OEM products have more advanced voice interfaces, but I can't say more than that

Wow! That sounds like an interesting development!!! Voice interfaces can be read as voice output and/or voice input. Given that you were previously looking at VR as an option for the empeg with the hardware in place, and the possibility of (someday, infinite spare time) backporting the software... Maybe VR isn't completely hopeless.

Not VR I'm afraid, voice response.

Hugo

Greetings!

Even so, that seems like it would be a nice addition...