Text-To-Speech issues on Samsung Intercept

[BattyBovine]

I recently purchased the Lulu TTS addon on my Samsung Intercept (Android 2.2.2 device). It sounds great for the most part, but my phone doesn't seem to want to read many syllables. For example, I played back the first example sentence for the word 有的, which should read:
Yǒude zhèyàng shuō, yǒude nàyàng shuō.

However, the TTS engine on my phone reads it as:
Yǒude ... ... ... yǒude nà ... ...

Testing it with other sentences yields similar results, and it seems to always skip the same syllables in any sentence regardless of character, dictionary entry, etc. I've also tested it in two Android emulator VMs -- one on version 2.2 and one on version 2.3.3, the closest I could get to my version -- and they both work fine. My phone has many, many, many issues besides this, so it's hard to tell if the problem is Pleco or my phone. If you need a logcat or something, I can try to get that as well.

 

[mikelove]

Testing it with other sentences yields similar results, and it seems to always skip the same syllables in any sentence regardless of character, dictionary entry, etc. I've also tested it in two Android emulator VMs -- one on version 2.2 and one on version 2.3.3, the closest I could get to my version -- and they both work fine. My phone has many, many, many issues besides this, so it's hard to tell if the problem is Pleco or my phone. If you need a logcat or something, I can try to get that as well.

Have you purchased Hui as well? If not, if you email us we can help you refund your Lulu purchase and try Hui instead - Hui can have lower CPU requirements in some cases, so it might behave better on your phone.

 

[BattyBovine]

I purchased Hui just now to test it out. It seems to work fine. The reason I tried Lulu first was simply because it was labeled as a female voice, and I generally prefer female TTS voices. I never noticed that Hui was a female voice as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a CPU issue that caused Lulu to not work properly. This phone is severely underpowered, and even overclocking the CPU seemed to do nothing. I intend to get a new one soon, so I'm not concerned about getting a refund on either of the addons. Considering how much value I get out of this app, it's worth the money I spent, and I'll simply have a wider choice of voices in the future.

Just out of curiosity, though, what exactly makes Lulu more CPU-dependent than Hui? Neither voice sounds bad, so I can't imagine it's a voice clarity issue or anything like that. In fact I'd say that Hui sounds a bit better if anything. Aside from the voice itself, is there any real difference between the two? I don't know much about the details of how TTS works, so it seems strange that one is significantly less demanding on the CPU than the other.

 

[mikelove]

I purchased Hui just now to test it out. It seems to work fine. The reason I tried Lulu first was simply because it was labeled as a female voice, and I generally prefer female TTS voices. I never noticed that Hui was a female voice as well.

Ah, yes, since we offer male and female voices in audio it's easy to get confused but actually we haven't found a good male TTS voice to license yet - Hui and Lulu provide about as extreme a contrast as you'd get with female ones, though.

Just out of curiosity, though, what exactly makes Lulu more CPU-dependent than Hui? Neither voice sounds bad, so I can't imagine it's a voice clarity issue or anything like that. In fact I'd say that Hui sounds a bit better if anything. Aside from the voice itself, is there any real difference between the two? I don't know much about the details of how TTS works, so it seems strange that one is significantly less demanding on the CPU than the other.

Not really sure, honestly - I don't have that good an idea how they work either. They're totally different programs from different companies, though, so it's reasonable that they would behave a bit differently.

 

[BattyBovine]

Okay, that makes sense. I hadn't considered that they might be licensed from different companies. Anyway, at least one of them works just fine, and hopefully when I get my new phone the other will work as well.

I'm consistently amazed at the quality of this software; it's the only program I've never had an issue with on my phone, other than this. Thank you for answering my questions, and for developing such a well-designed and useful application.