reading words in your computer and changing to female voice, linux festival text2wave saving wav files

on a brand new linux PC, e.g. ubuntu 14.04 amd64

To hear voice

sudo apt-get install festival -y

then try to hear some thing from your PC

echo "I am your computer." | festival --tts
# or
echo "I am your computer." | festival --tts --pipe

you will hear something out.

Now replace the voice files, a better one.

Tutorial from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eJTDpAeBSk

To replace voice

commands including:

apt-get install festival
sudo su
cd /usr/share/festival/voices/english/
wget -c http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cmu_arctic/packed/cmu_us_clb_arctic-0.95-release.tar.bz2
tar jxf cmu_us_clb_arctic-0.95-release.tar.bz2
ln -s cmu_us_clb_arctic cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits
echo "(set! voice_default 'voice_cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits)" >> /etc/festival.scm

Then go to command line

$~ festival
festival> (SayText "Hello world")

You will hear something different, a female voice would come out.

To save wave files

echo "Hello I am Lily. " > /tmp/one.txt
text2wave < /tmp/one.txt > /tmp/voice.wav
mplayer /tmp/voice.wav

Your voice file has been saved.

Happy hacking!

* Updated in the morning 09:17 A.M.

To hear selected text in your PC

Now I am going to teach you how to make it in ubuntu 14.04 AMD64

sudo apt-get install xsel -y
sudo su
cat >> /usr/local/bin/xread <<EOF
# Then input
> #!/bin/bash
> xsel | festival --tts --pipe
> EOF

Then create a keyboard shortcut in your PC. KDE/Gnome/Xfce4/Cinnamon/Mate/LXDE or any kind of desktop environment which is based on Xorg services.

In this case, I map the keys <Meta> + <r> in ubuntu 14.04 AMD64. Actually the <Meta> key is the *windows* key which is useless in Linux. Here I just took good use of that. This shortcut will trigger the script "/usr/local/bin/xread" which uses tools "xsel" and "festival".

Use your cursor and select any text area in your PC, browser, console, text editor or anywhere and then press keys <Meta> + <r>. Then you will hear the text voice.

Happy hacking!