How do I add a Cepstral voice to Ultra Hal?

[Bergie]

I'm using Ultra Hal test to speech reader. I downloaded one of the Cepstral voices from their web site. It's not yet a registered voice as I wanted to try it out first. How do I get the Cepstral voiced to show up in the Ultra Hal voice selection menu? I thought it would show up after installing the Cepstral voice to my computer but it did not. How do I import it? Or do I first have to register the voice?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

[DrFaraday]

Hi Bergie,

I have Cepstral David and Hal Reader on my older computer.  The David voice is registered.  I also have Cepstral Duncan, which is unregistered.

Both of them work fine.  The Duncan voice reads, and intermittently repeats a message saying his voice needs to be registered.

Did you install the voice in the default directory suggested by the software?  What operating system are you using, and what kind of computer?  How much memory?

I have another computer that won't run Hal Reader at all, I don't know why; I suspect a conflict with my Dragon 10 software, but am not sure.  Sometimes results can vary from computer to computer.

-c.

[Bergie]

The computer is an emachine brand, not sure of it's speed or  memory but it's quite new so it should have enough. I'm using Vista OS.

Yes I did install the voice in it's default directory (Callie). I see it also installed 'SwiftTalker' at the same time.

So I assume Callie (the newly installed vice) should have automatically showed up in voice selection menu of Ultra Hal? I don't know, maybe I need to reinstall Hal again? Hal does seem to work fine on this computer without problems. Just can't get the new voice to show up anywhere.

[DrFaraday]

I've not had much experience with Vista, but I've heard that sometimes there are issues where Vista needs to be told to give permission to the new program to be allowed to run, or something like that?  Perhaps someone with Vista could explain it better.

Did you download the Callie voice recently?  I had purchased David a few years ago, and several months ago, I had to "upgrade" it for some reason, it was a free download, I don't remember all the specifics of what it was for and why.

My Cepstral voices, registered and unregistered, show up automatically in the voice selection area of Ultra Hal; I believe that is the way it's supposed to be. You might want to see if Cepstral has a forum, and if there are any issues with Cepstral and Vista.  Perhaps others who read this will be able to make further suggestions.

- Chas

[Bergie]

Yes I downloaded Callie just a few days ago and it's unregistered. Thought I'd try it out and see how I liked it before actually purchasing it.

I was able to go into 'control panel' where I found a 'text to speech' icon. I found all the voices of Hal in there and also so was Callie. I selected Callie from there as my computer's default voice and was hoping that did the trick but when I start Hal again, it reverts back to one of Hal's old voices.

[Bergie]

Just tried uninstalling Ultra Hal and reinstalled it again, then rebooted. Still no Cepstral Callie voice in the voice drop down menu of Ultra Hal. Not sure what else to try.

[DrFaraday]

Ultra Hal should work with Cepstral voices, there is even a link to  Cepstral on the main page of Zabaware, I bought mine via the Zabaware site.

The Cepstral voices should simply be a selected option in Options/Speech in Ultra Hal, for both registered and unregistered Cepstral voices.  Have you actually been able to use the Callie voice in any other applications?  Have you heard it speak on your computer?  If not, the file could be corrupted.

Cepstral has a speech utility called Swifttalker that works with Cepstral voices.  I don't recall wether it comes with unregistered voices or not, but if it did, can you use it to hear Callie speak?

I think Cepstral voices require SAPI5, not 4.  I would guess that Vista has that, but I don't have Vista, so I don't know if there is somewhere you can check to see if it's set to use SAPI4 or 5.

Be sure that Vista has given the Cepstral program permission to operate with other programs.  Make sure the Cepstral download was good, try it out on another computer if you can.  Other than that, I'm out of suggestions.

- Chaz

[DrFaraday]

Bergie, one other thing.  You may want to try the search link in the upper right side of the forum.  Search for "Cepstral" and "Vista".  I had a quick look and found these posts:

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5924&SearchTerms=,Cepstral,Vista

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6128&SearchTerms=,Cepstral,Vista

If you look through them all, you may find something that helps.

- Chaz

[schmido]

Hi Bergie
I was browsing around Cepstrals' site and came across this page.
http://cepstral.com/cgi-bin/support?page=issues&type=windows
They seem to be addressing the problem here in the "known issues under windows" info ("Third party applications")
Might this not be a factor in your problem?