CereProc voices on sale now!

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I just realized that I have an Ivona voice from Harposoft (Salli) that I never installed (or maybe I tried awhile ago and it didn't work with the Cereproc voices ). I'll try testing it with a Cereproc voice on a second PC that I don't use for flightsim stuff to see if I can see what can be done. I'm pessimistic though. Some developers use MinGW as their C++ development platform instead of MS Visual Studio. EXE and DLL files compiled this way need some additional DLLs to run correctly such as libstdc ++-6.dll. Little NavMap, Cereproc voices and Harposoft voices all were developed this way.  Given that MinGW is freeware, there's no guarantee that a newer DLL is backwards compatible with older code. Once one version of the DLL is loaded, it is used by all apps and libraries unless unloaded. Windows has a way around this (Side-by-side assemblies, like what is used with the SimConnect DLL versions) but MinGW doesn't do this. 

[Pete Dowson 558]

4 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

... test each voice in the Windows control panel under speech settings. There's no need to run the sim.

Don't need to run the Sim anyway. You can test voices in P2A when it is offline too.

2 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I'm pessimistic though.

I see your logic. That would be a shame. If it has to be a choice, though, I'm sticking with my Ivona voices -- better qyality than Cereproc by a long way.

I would re-purchase the Ivona voices direct from Ivona if I really wanted to use the Cereproc ones too, but as it is I'd rather buy some other Ivona ones than squander money so.

Thanks -- look forward to your results.

Pete

 

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

1 hour ago, Pete Dowson said:

I would re-purchase the Ivona voices direct from Ivona ...

I think that Ivona now only sells through its two partners, Harposoft and TextAloud. I would contact TextAloud to see whether their installer is either just the voices or has other items that might interfere with Cereproc voices. It looks like one can just purchase an Ivona voice without the TextAloud app. We know that Harposoft voices are incompatible.

[Pete Dowson 558]

Well, I don't understand this at all ...

As an experiment, I renamed the Cereproc DLL as DLX then copied over the DLL from Speech2Go (Ivona). i.e. so now they both had the same 8426 kb version.

That didn't work. So I tried the other way around. That didn't work either. So, giving up, I put things back as they were ...

... but they can't be exactly the same, because now they all work! Maybe they won't after a system re-boot, I thought. So I tried that too.

Result: success.

Well, I don't know what I could possibly have done to "fix" it, but it seems I can now use all my voices (well, 12 at a time at present, until Dave makes P2A automatically choose voices from a selection).

Pete

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

7 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

Well, I don't understand this at all ...

As an experiment, I renamed the Cereproc DLL as DLX then copied over the DLL from Speech2Go (Ivona). i.e. so now they both had the same 8426 kb version.

That didn't work. So I tried the other way around. That didn't work either. So, giving up, I put things back as they were ...

... but they can't be exactly the same, because now they all work! Maybe they won't after a system re-boot, I thought. So I tried that too.

Result: success.

Well, I don't know what I could possibly have done to "fix" it, but it seems I can now use all my voices (well, 12 at a time at present, until Dave makes P2A automatically choose voices from a selection).

Pete

 

You did better than I did. I tried a less stringent version of the same tests on a non-flightsim PC but just with the Windows speech applet. I must admit, I gave up and didn't try a reboot. We are flying IFR here Pete, because we have no idea how the OS and apps load and unload those MinGW DLLs. There's a ton of stuff online about MinGW and DLL versions, mostly complaining about the same kind of problem. What I really don't understand is how does Little NavMap work alongside Cereproc voices and Speech2Go? It must have something to do with the order in which DLLs are found, called, loaded and unloaded.

 

EDIT: Pete did you swap all the MinGW DLLs or just one?

Edited January 25, 2019 by jabloomf1230

[Pete Dowson 558]

4 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

EDIT: Pete did you swap all the MinGW DLLs or just one?

Just the one reported in the error, i.e. ibstdc ++-6.dll.  And only the two 64-bit ones, for obvious reasons. But I put them back as they were, so as far as I can see it looks now exactly as it did before!

That's why I don't understand why it works. Maybe just be doing the swap, even temporarily, I broke some sort of tenuous link to something else, but I don't know how that could be.

Pete

 

[robvanderwiele 2]

For your information:
I just downloaded the cereproc voices again from cereproc.com and now they work together with the Ivona voices I have.The cereproc voices I had were version 4.0.4. The new ones are version 5.0.1.

Best,
Rob

 

Edited April 13, 2019 by robvanderwiele

[Pete Dowson 558]

2 hours ago, robvanderwiele said:

I just downloaded the cereproc voices again from cereproc.com and now they work together with the Ivona voices I have.The cereproc voices I had were version 4.0.4. The new ones are version 5.0.1.

Yes, I got the version 5 ones a little while back. Now I have many voices to use! I've been listening to some of the samples of the Cereproc non-English voices (using the test English phrase, not their translated versions), and they mostly sound understandable -- the easiest were, oddly, the Chinese, Japanese, Polish, German and Swedish ones, with the 'Latin' countries -- France, Italy, Spain and Portugal -- much less so, definitely needing slowing down quite a bit.

Odd that. you'd think we'd be more used to those, at least us European travellers. I think they must automatically slow down when they realise (quite quickly) that they are speaking to a stupid 'Englisher' who obviously never learned any other languages! 😉