Well can report back that Sphinx was ported by Mikkos counterpart,Max,in New Zealand and the results,even with tweaking,are worse than eSpeak.`Dark Vader with a really bad head-cold ` is a very good description of the end result So Max is continuing to port Festival,but reports that the scripts are very similar thus believes the results will be comparable.He also suggested that many other synth scripts hes studied are incomplete university projects.But there may be light at the end of the tunnel.....Let me explain.

I was on the companies live feed site discussing voice synthesis (hey i`m bored....4 weeks R&R ) and it was suggested that I contact the supplier of our two way radios who happens to be a New Zealand company.Why? All the radios we use have a highly refined speech synthesis system very similar to what is required to complete this project.As our work involves working in extremely noisy environments,180dB plus,all operators wear an earpiece and throat mike to activate the VOX system.What this allows the operators to do is `request`.An example is when you can ask to be connected to `Stevie`,an operator somewhere onsite,a husky (very sexy) female voice repeats your request and processes it,even telling you `you are connected`.You have the conversation and end it by saying `end`.It also allows you to dial out,take messages and preview them back.The system also sleeps,to preserve battery,and to awaken it,just say `wake`.Then the husky female voice says `system awake ****** ( your name)`.Theres a option available for `added real voice modules`.So,if you want,you can change the voice on your radio to,let says,Japanese,if you speak it,but it auto translate to the module on the receiving radio and visa versa. There are 300 options that can be programmed into either individual radios or as a group.

But,as we have to change radio frequencies to suit the mine site we are based on,to avoid band clashes and overlaps,we have all the software,with all options,available to us,allowing reprogramming of the radios individually or OTA .

Sooooo,Max is going to look at this software and decide if it can be ported,and secondary,if the suppliers of the radio software will allow us access.