The Festival Speech Synthesis System version 2.0.95 and
Edinburgh Speech Tools Library version 2.0.95
April 2010

Surprisingly we have a new release.  Please give feedback for installation issues so they can be fixed in a 2.1 release.

Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules.  As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C++ library, from Java, and an Emacs interface.  Festival is multi-lingual (currently English (British and American), and Spanish) though English is the most advanced.  Other groups release new languages for the system.  And full tools and documentation for build new voices are available through Carnegie Mellon's FestVox project (http://festvox.org).  This version also supports voices built with the latest version of Nagoya Institute of Technologies' HTS system (http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp)

The system is written in C++ and uses the Edinburgh Speech Tools Library for low level architecture and has a Scheme (SIOD) based command interpreter for control.  Documentation is given in the FSF texinfo format which can generate, a printed manual, info files and HTML.

Festival is free software.  Festival and the speech tools are distributed under an X11-type licence allowing unrestricted commercial and non-commercial use alike.

This distribution includes:
 * Full English (British and American English) text to speech
 * Full C++ source for modules, SIOD interpreter, and Scheme library
 * Lexicon based on CMULEX and OALD (OALD is restricted to non-commercial use only)
 * Edinburgh Speech Tools, low level C++ library
 * rab_diphone: British English Male residual LPC, diphone
 * kal_diphone: American English Male residual LPC diphone
 * cmu_us_slt_arctic_hts: American Female, HTS
 * cmu_us_rms_cg: American Male using  clustergen
 * cmu_us_awb_cg: Scottish English Male (with US frontend) clustergen
 * Full documentation (html, postscript and GNU info format)

Note there are some licence restrictions on the voices themselves. The US English voices have the same restrictions as Festival.  The UK lexicon (OALD) is restrictied to non-commercial use.

Addition voices are also available.

Festival version 2.0.95 sources, voices

In Europe:
  http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/downloads/festival/2.0.95/
In North America:
  http://festvox.org/festival

Requirements

To run Festival you need:
 * A Unix-like environment, e.g Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, cygwin under Windows.
 * A C++ compiler: we have used GCC  versions. 2.x updato 4.1
 * GNU Make any recent version

New in 2.0.95
 * Support for the new versions of C++ that have been released
 * Integrated and updated support for HTS, Clustergen, Multisyn and Clunits voices
 * "Building Voices in Festival" document describing process of building new voices in the system
     http://festvox.org/

Alan W Black (CMU)
Rob Clark (Edinburgh)
Junichi Yamagishi (Edinburgh)
Keiichiro Oura (Nagoya)