[hts-users:00362] HTS-2.0RC1

["Heiga ZEN (Byung Ha CHUN)" <zen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear members of hts-users mailing list,


HTS working group would like to release the second release candidate for upcoming HTS-2.0 and a demonstration.
They can be downloaded from

HTS-2.0RC2_for_HTK-3.4-alpha.patch: http://kt-lab.ics.nitech.ac.jp/~zen/HTS-2.0RC2_for_HTK-3.4-alpha.patch.gz
(161841 bytes, MD5 checksum: c02b1034cc3bfae6e6e8ab9226f9c60c)

HTS-demo_CMU-ARCTIC-SLT.tar.gz:  http://kt-lab.ics.nitech.ac.jp/~zen/HTS-demo_CMU-ARCTIC-SLT.tar.gz
(96259404 bytes, MD5 checksum 76d49d8e1209c450a1660dde5d1a0cd8)


Differences between RC1 and RC2 are as follows:

 - Based on HTK-3.4-alpha
 - Many fixed bugs (HAdapt, HTrain, HFB, HGen, HHEd, HMGenS, HERest) 
 - HMGenS_align (http://kt-lab.ics.nitech.ac.jp/hts-users/spool/2004/msg00026.html) is integrated to HMGenS
 - Input/Output of binary double is implemented
 - Miscellaneous changes

HTS-2.0RC1 has fatal bugs in voiced/unvoiced handling and EM-based parameter generation (HGen.c), so please *do not use* it!!


This version is released as a patch code to HTK-3.4-alpha (http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk/).
You can download it from the following addresses:

HTK 3.4 (alpha) download:
http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk/ftp/software/HTK-3.4-alpha.tar.gz

HDecode:
See extensions page on HTK website - 
http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk/extensions/index.shtml

After downloading HTK-3.4-alpha, HDecode and HTS-2.0RC2 patch code, please expand them and apply the patch code on htk-3.4 directory as
follows:

 htk-3.4% patch -p1 -d . < HTS-2.0RC2_for_HTK-3.4-alpha.patch

Then please run configure and make.


Festival Speech Synthesis System (http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/download.html) and SPTK
(http://kt-lab.ics.nitech.ac.jp/~tokuda/SPTK/index.html) are required to run the demonstration.
Please download, configure, make, and install them.

Many people have asked us about F0 extraction, so from this release we decided to include a F0 extraction program using get_f0.
Fortunately, get_f0 function have been included in the open-source speech toolkit *Snack* (http://www.speech.kth.se/snack/).
In the release we include a Tcl/Tk script to call get_f0 function from Snack.
Therefore, you also have to install Tcl/Tk and Snack on your environment to run the demonstration.
ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com/) freely provides a Tcl/Tk distribution named ActiveTcl for many platforms (http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/?mp=1).
This distribution includes Snack and it is easy to install and use.
I recommend you to use this for running the demonstration (Actually I use it).  

After expanding HTS-demo_CMU-ARCTIC-SLT.tar.gz, please run configure.
If your PATH variable does not include SPTK, Festival, tclsh (with Snack) and HTS binary directory, please run configure as follows:

$ PATH=/usr/local/SPTK/bin:/usr/local/HTS-2.0RC1_for_HTK-3.3/bin.linux:/usr/local/festival/examples:/usr/local/Activetcl/bin:$PATH ./configure

Then run make.
After composing training data, training script will be run in background.


This is release *candidate*, it may contain a number of bugs or problems.
We are planning to release the final version in this summer.
Any bug reports or comments are highly appreciated, please mail to hts-users mailing list.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you :-)

Best regards,

Heiga Zen (Byung Ha Chun)

-- 
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  Heiga ZEN     (in Japanese pronunciation)
  Byung-Ha CHUN (in Korean pronunciation)

  Department of Computer Science and Engineering
  Nagoya Institute of Technology
  Japan

  web: http://kt-lab.ics.nitech.ac.jp/~zen
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