IVONA Lexicon file for Text to Speech
 

This goes (in Windows 7 at least) in (YourName)>AppData>Roaming>IVONA 2 Voice. That folder is hidden by default.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...lish-ivona.rar


Here's a video demonstrating some of the enhancements this lexicon file provides:

OOTP 15 with IVONA Joey TTS - YouTube

If you go to the IVONA home page you can test out pronunciations really easily. That's been a big help. No doubt you'll want to add your own pronunciations, you can do this by going to Control Panel>Speech Recognition>Text To Speech>Settings>Lexicon


File updated on April 2nd 2015

I am running windows 8.1...I can no longer get text to speech to work...I have no idea why...do you have any suggestions....Thank You for your time.

64-bit OS? If so, you need to run a certain command. I'm unable to look it up at the moment.

pstrickert,,, Thank You for answering so quickly. I am running 8.1 64 bit OS.. It's really annoying it will not work. Whenever you have the time to look it up is fine with me. Again thank you for your time.

Open "Run" in Windows and type in this command:

%windir%\SysWOW64\speech\SpeechUX\sapi.cpl

I like the tweaks you've made.

With some work various voices along with lexicon files could be made into different broadcasters. It isn't far from there to have multiple broadcasters. The standard play-by-play along with a color commentator.

The rub is that Windows is so limited out of the box for voices. Mac has so many more
voices to work with.

Thanks gbwitheyes.

I hope the OOTP TTS for Mac is working soon, you've got some excellent ideas about pushing the feature further.

There are some small attempts at 'color' in my file but someone with the time and inclination could do so much more. One drawback, I guess, would be that it would be mostly league specific - my league is fictional and now in 2030, the little bits of added play-by-play in my file have no relevance to anyone else's league.

I've recently discovered SSML tags. They seem to work with IVONA and OOTP. By using different levels of pitch, volume and emphasis I'm hoping to add a touch more emotion to the play-by-play. I'd like to make the big homers, the grand slams, the amazing catches all stand out more.

chicago, this is what I see when I use the run command. Do you see something different?

I have been impressed by these voices for Windows. I think we will turn some heads if we can bring the current TTS PBP up to these standards.

I don't see any reason that we can't.

Wow, those are significantly superior to anything I've heard before. I would guess that they're firmly in the ridiculous price range currently but it shows how rapidly TTS technology is advancing.

pstrickert...Thanks for all your help. I broke down and bought Ivona - Joey...and now my narrator works.

Quintin, any idea how to get the Narrator to say "first" for "1st"?

pstrickert - after the latest patch I tried the IVONA lexicon file in conjunction with your tts_pronunciation file and '1st' was one of a number of issues I noticed.

I think the specific problem with 1st is probably something to do with ex-major leaguers Randy 'St. Claire' and Max 'St. Pierre'. The narrator sees the 'St' in your file and this overrides the IVONA lexicon.

Although your file is both excellent and extensive, since I play fictional I have now deleted it's contents. If you want email me a copy of the the file and I'll take a shot at erasing the niggling conflicts.

No, "1st" is not in the tts_pronun file. "st" is in the file, though. The Narrator will pronounce it "street". I changed the pronunciation to "saint" to avoid the problem of having the Chicago Cubs play the "Street Louis Cardinals." The problem, then, I guess, is that "1st" is now pronounced "one saint". Probably nothing we can do about it, unless Andreas incorporates some higher-level rules for TTS.

Ah okay, I forgot about St Louis. I think there's probably a way round this using the IVONA lexicon and deleting some entries from your tts file. I'll have a go later today. Failing that you will be forced to relocate the Cards (though not to St Paul) :D

Haven't been able to pinpoint the problem but something inside the tts_pronunciation file is causing 'Street Louis'. If I totally clear the contents of the aforementioned file the narrator says 'Saint Louis' (also on the IVONA site 'St. Louis' works as intended).

I have tried deleting St., St, St.Louis and even (Huston) Street from the tts_pro file but with no luck. Any other ideas?

A complete aside - I was just testing this and something incredible happened:

According to bbref no pitcher has hit an inside the park homer in the majors for almost 35 years. Also noteworthy was that it came on a hit in the direction of Billy Hamilton.

Nope. :-\

Yeah I'm out of ideas too. There's no reference to St. anywhere else in the tts_pro file, it's a mystery.

File updated today. Includes several minor improvements/enhancements. Also now contains (mostly) correct pronunciations for all current major leaguers plus top prospects.

Thanks for the update. I wonder if you could explain the changes to pronunciations. I've compare some of your changes to the originals (in the latest tts_pronunciation file) and I don't see the problems.

I feel rather mean spirited criticising the tts_pronun file (having just completed the current MLB rosters I can imagine how long it took to capture every name in the entire history of the sport). It works well for non-IVONA voices and is far more comprehensive than my lexicon file will ever be. However I don't think it works well in tandem with IVONA Joey.

It seems to cause some stuttering and also causes the mangling of certain words. For example I just fired up OOTP with the tts_pronun file active and in the first game I noticed Moss, Murphy, Yoenis and Andrus all sounded off.

I think the exhaustive nature of the file also leads to problems. For instance 'backhand snare' sounds strange with the file active. 'Snare' is in the tts_pronun file. With the tts_pronun file inactive 'backhand snare' sounds fine.

There are also inexplicable issues such as we found with 'St. Louis'. Again, with the tts file inactive, St. Louis comes out okay.

I believe the same phonetic system is used for Microsoft and IVONA voices. Slight differences occur in pronunciation, not because of the phonemes assigned to a word, but the voice engine itself (or so I would suppose). Neither engine is without pronunciation problems. Either way, OOTP needs a file to assist it with all the different (and unusual) names in the database. Either the one I created or the lexicon you're building.

The tts_pronunciation file is included with the game so that the user can tweak the phonemes for some of the names. Believe me, I had to guess at the pronunciation for many of them. When I find out I've made a mistake, I fix it right away. If users such as yourself notice a mispronunciation, I'm glad to fix it if I can.

I tested the game using a 2013 MLB season, first with the tts_pronunciation file, and second just your IVONA lexicon file. I noticed problems both times. This leads me to believe that using the tts_pronunciation file (or using the IVONA lexicon file) is not the problem. The problem is that some of the names in the file need slight changes. Or new entries need to be added to the IVONA lexicon file. I imagine you would agree that the results are imperfect. Refining the files is an ongoing project. :)

To follow up: I fixed "Yoenis" in the tts_pro file (assuming I now know how to pronounce it!). "Moss" sounded okay if it was followed by another word. It does sound kind of odd when it ends a sentence. That does happen occasionally, as I've noticed before. "Andrus" sounded just fine to my ears. Again, though, the pronunciation can be tweaked in the tts_pro file. Most of the time, at least in my experience, that solves the problem. ;)

An on-going, imperfect project for sure. Having spent about an hour today trying to figure out 'Trey Michalczewski' I would argue that unpronounceable players be declared draft ineligible.

Elvis Andrus is Elvis 'Andrews', no?

I thought it was An-druss! :laugh: I'll listen to a Rangers game and find out how they're pronouncing it.

I've heard both but figured the bref listing was correct. Googling 'Elvis Andrus pronunciation' however opens up a whole can of worms! Briefly - sounds like either is acceptable.

Yes, between the imperfect TTS engine and the nuances in the pronunciation of player names, we've got our work cut out for us.

Indeed. I think we should start a player pronunciation thread somewhere more prominent on the forum in order to ease the task. I'm currently wrestling with Mets' prospect Jack Leathersich. There must be people out there who know whether it is Leather-sick, Leather-seech or some other strange variant.

One problem I expected to run into but haven't yet is players with the same spelling but different pronunciations. Like a player called Gomes is going to come along soon who uses 'Gomez'. I'm guessing there are quite a few examples of this in MLB history though?

I don't seem to have the folder or IVONA. Does anyone know where to get this?

go to the Ivona website and purchase the program it is an excellent....

Okay, so it is not a freeware or such. I wanted to check on that. About what is the cost? Thanks.

Joey - Harpo

Available here at about $40. There's a 30 day free trial so you can test it out.

Would be cool to have Alvin do play-by-play.
Chipmunk - Harpo

Ha, not sure I could stand more than a half inning of that. Although it still beats Hawk Harrelson.

The best IVONA voice, technically, is probably 'Justin' but listening to a small child broadcast the games gets a bit weird quite quickly.

File updated in original post

Where is this file located?

Ivona lexicon file
 

If there is anyone else using Ivona text to speech I have updated the lexicon file so it sounds more realistic. Examples: Batting averages: instead of saying dot one hundred and twenty for .120 it will have an adjective in front and the numbers will sound more like a real broadcast like "a weak one twenty" or "an excellent 3 oh 5" I have changed all zeros to sound like 'ohs'. I also changed some other stuff, e.g. K/BB ratio now says strikeout to walk ratio. I also got rid of it saying dot for ., dot dot for .. and dot dot dot for ... with the exception of where ... shows up at the beginning of the game and some other places in the PbP where it says dot. Those don't come from PbP xml file and must be in some other format. I also corrected the pronunciations of some names from games of have been playing. If anyone has any suggestions or questions, let me know. The file goes into: (user)>AppData>Roaming>IVONA 2 Voice. as Quinton says and may be hidden so you will have to set the folder to show hidden files. I also suggest that you rename or copy to another location the original file in case you want to go back. I hope you like the changes. I would like to do this for the Narrator voice that comes with Windows but I can't find the lexicon file for that. If anyone knows where it is, let me know. I know it is a different type of file, i.e. not a .lex file. Here is the link to my Ivona lex file. I will up date it from time to time as I fix more name pronunciations. https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4zg...Speech_and_PbP

Ivona lexicon update
 

Here is an updated lexicon for Ivona. I corrected a couple of things and deleted my attempt to get to properly pronoun all names. No matter what I do, it pronounces names that way it wants, sometimes two different ways in the same PbP. Maybe some day someone will come up with a good baseball announcer voice that pronounces the names correctly and has a way to modify it's lexicon. I can only hope!

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4zg...Speech_and_PbP

new Ivona lexicon file update
 

Here is another update to the file. I changed most, if not all, the duplicate batting average prefixes up to .600. Anything after .600 is kind of rare so they don't show up much plus I ran out of new adjectives to use.I may change some of those later. I can not, however, get to pronounce some names correctly no matter what I add as a pronunciation. Tim Salmon is a good example. No matter how I change it to in the lexicon settings it still says Samone. Joey can't seem to get past some French pronunciation! http://www.mediafire.com/?4zg184khez5xa

Hi adion, good to see this thread still going! Just a quick suggestion - are you using this lexicon in conjunction with the tts_pronunciation.txt file that comes with the game? That might be the reason you can't get it to say some names. I believe the tts_pronunciation.txt file is considered by OOTP before any .lex file.

Thanks. I was not aware of that. I will check it out.

Ivona pronunciation
 

I renamed that .txt file so it wouldn't load and it made a big difference not only in some pronunciations but in overall performance of the Ivona voice. There are some names that it is now miss-pronounces, e.g. Visquel, Ogea Buhner, Blowers, etc. and I have been able to fix those. The ones that it was miss-pronouncing before seem to be working okay now so I removed the changes I made to those from the lexicon file. It doesn't like the word 'winds' as in the pitchers winds. It want to pronounce winds like the winds of a storm. I am trying to fix that. Once I have more stuff fixed I will upload the changed file. Thanks for the tip.

As I recall 'wynds' should work for 'winds'

Actually, whynds works as does whynd. I already fixed it. I will up date the file after I play a few more historical Indian's game to correct some more name mispronunciations then upload an up date.

Can't wait until there is a good sports announcer voice with a modifiable lexicon method!

Thanks,
Alan

Ivona lexicon update
 

Here is another update for the Ivona Lexicon. I have fixed some of the batting average prefixes and changed some of the duplicates up to .610. I have also fixed wind and winds and some more name pronunciations from the historical Indians seasons I am fooling around with. I highly recommend that you either disable by renaming or moving the tts_pronunciation.txt file since it causes Ivona to screw up some of the names. I don't plan on updating this file anymore unless there is a major change. I am sure that those of you using Ivona know how to use the Speech Properties to test and change pronunciations. If not, let me know and I will see if I can help.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4zg...Speech_and_PbP

Why not just make changes to the tts_pronunciation file?

I tried that. Ivona doesn't like the format of the pronunciation of words in there.

I didn't know that. I thought IVONA used the same SAPI5 phonetic system. :huh: