Py-marytts

This is a feature release, adding new features while maintaining compatibility with existing 4.x voices.

This release marks the final results of work on MARY TTS in the [​PAVOQUE project](../pavoque/), in which we experimented with different technologies for adding expressivity to unit selection synthesis.
The release makes available those project results that may be of interest to a wider audience.

New features for expressive unit selection synthesis
- selecting style from a multi-style database using a symbolic style feature;
- imposing target prosody using FD-PSOLA signal modification.

Style can be selected using RAWMARYXML's `<prosody style="...">` markup (see new expressive voice, below).

Prosody modification is available for all unit selection voices, including older ones;
to activate it, click the checkbox "Apply prosody modification" in the [​web interface](http://mary.dfki.de:59125/).
This feature should be considered experimental, and the quality depends on many factors, including the accuracy of the pitchmarks used for building the unit selection voice.
While this feature is likely to lead to reduced quality, it enables research on expressive prosody with unit selection voices.

For more information on the MaryXML `<prosody>` markup which can now be applied to all types of MARY voices, see [ProsodySpecificationSupport](http://mary.opendfki.de/wiki/ProsodySpecificationSupport).

New expressive voice
- we release the multi-style expressive German voice 'dfki-pavoque-styles' (660 MB) built from the full PAVOQUE corpus;
see [​Steiner et al. (2010)](http://www.dfki.de/web/research/publications?pubid=4877) for a description of this corpus.
The different styles can be requested using RAWMARYXML `<prosody style="A_STYLE">...</prosody>`, where `A_STYLE` is one of `happy`, `angry`, `sad`, and `poker`.

New language: Russian
- Nickolay Shmyrev has kindly made available language support for Russian, as well as the Russian male unit selection voice voxforge-ru-nsh.
Thanks Nickolay!

Bugfixes
- This release also includes a number of bugfixes, see http://mary.opendfki.de/query?status=closed&amp;group=resolution&amp;milestone=4.3

This is a feature release, adding new features while maintaining compatibility with existing 4.x voices.

This release marks the final results of work on MARY TTS in the [​SEMAINE project](http://www.semaine-project.eu/), where our main focus for TTS has been on building expressive British English voices with listener vocalization capabilities.

New features for synthesis of expressive vocalizations
- Improved support for expressive vocalizations in the British English unit selection voices dfki-poppy, dfki-prudence, dfki-spike and dfki-obadiah.
Signal modification is now used to combine intonation contours and segmental forms, as described in [​Pammi et al. (2010)](http://www.dfki.de/lt/publication_show.php?id=4886).
- Added vocalization support to the HMM-based versions of these voices:
dfki-poppy-hsmm, dfki-prudence-hsmm, dfki-spike-hsmm and dfki-obadiah-hsmm.

For details on the new MaryXML `<vocalization>` tag and usage examples, see [VocalizationSynthesis](http://mary.opendfki.de/wiki/VocalizationSynthesis).

New voice
- For German, we created bits1-hsmm, a female HMM-based voice built from recordings provided by ​[BITS](http://www.phonetik.uni-muenchen.de/Forschung/BITS/index.html).

Bugfixes
- This release also includes a number of bugfixes, see http://mary.opendfki.de/query?status=closed&amp;group=resolution&amp;milestone=4.2

This is a bugfix release.

Bugfixes
- Fixed a critical bug for Windows users who got an "OutOfMemoryError" when trying to start the server with unit selection voices
- [314 Memory mapping causes OutOfMemoryError if -Xmx is set too high](http://mary.opendfki.de/ticket/314)
- Other small bug fixes -- see http://mary.opendfki.de/query?status=closed&amp;group=resolution&amp;milestone=4.1.1

New voices
- Added Telugu HMM-based voice "cmu-nk-hsmm".

More info

For more background information, please also refer to the [Release notes of MARY 4.1.0](releasenotes-4.1.0.html).

This is a feature release, adding new features while maintaining compatibility with existing 4.0 voices.

New features for expressive TTS
- **Prosody control for HMM-based voices.** Using the SSML [`​<prosody>` tag](http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis11/edef_prosody), it is now possible to control the intonation generated for HMM-based voices from markup.
Of particular interest is the "contour" attribute, which allows you to change the shape of the intonation curve.
For details and examples, see ProsodySpecificationSupport.
- **Expressive vocalizations** in certain unit selection voices.
MaryXML now supports a new `<vocalization>` tag, with which you can request the generation of non-verbal or para-verbal expressions as they are often produced by the listener in a conversation, such as "yeah", "m-hm", laughter, sigh, etc.
For details and examples, see [VocalizationSynthesis](http://mary.opendfki.de/wiki/VocalizationSynthesis).

New voices
- For British English, we release HMM-based versions of the four voices Poppy, Spike, Obadiah and Prudence.
- Updated versions of many of the previously existing voices, with improved quality.

Bugfixes and other improvements
- Faster startup times.
MARY 4.1.0 starts nearly twice as fast and needs about 30% less physical memory compared to MARY 4.0.0, due to the use of memory mapping for unit selection voices.
- Quality of German and English components improved.
A number of bugs were fixed which had degraded the quality of the synthesis results in MARY 4.0.0:
- [297 German words spelled out when they shouldn't](http://mary.opendfki.de/ticket/297)
- [273 Several problems with abbreviations in German](http://mary.opendfki.de/ticket/273)
- [308 German compound analysis over-active](http://mary.opendfki.de/ticket/308)
- [287 Abbreviations in German trigger major boundary insertion](http://mary.opendfki.de/ticket/287)
- [304 English support for apostrophies is broken](http://mary.opendfki.de/ticket/304)
- Multiple bugs were also fixed under the surface.
For a full list, see http://mary.opendfki.de/query?status=closed&amp;group=resolution&amp;milestone=4.1

More info

For more background information, please also refer to the [Release notes of MARY 4.0.0](releasenotes-4.0.0.html).

What's new

This is the first stable release of the new 4.0 code.
MARY 4.0 is a major cleanup over previous versions of MARY TTS.

What's new

This is a first beta release of the new 4.0 code.
MARY 4.0 is a major cleanup over previous versions of MARY TTS.
- 100% Pure Java.
All native libraries have been removed from the system.
MARY should now run on any platform that has Java 1.5 or newer.
- Fully open source.
All code is now open source under the [​LGPL](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0-standalone.html), including German TTS.
Voices are distributed under Creative Commons or BSD licenses.
- New languages.
We have added Turkish and Telugu synthesis for now, and have made it easy to add more languages in the future.

MARY now comes with a toolkit for people who want to add support for new languages or build their own voices. There is detailed documentation for
- [creating initial support for a new language](http://mary.opendfki.de/wiki/NewLanguageSupport);
- [recording and building a unit selection voice](http://mary.opendfki.de/wiki/VoiceImportToolsTutorial); and
- [creating an HMM-based voice](http://mary.opendfki.de/wiki/HMMVoiceCreationMary4.0) from the same recordings.

More details on individual issues addressed can be seen in the [list of tickets associated with this release](http://mary.opendfki.de/query?status=closed&amp;group=resolution&amp;milestone=4.0+beta).

Tested environments

The MARY client and server code was tested on:
- Mac OS X (Intel) 10.5.8 with java 1.6.0_07
- Ubuntu Linux 8.10 and 9.04 with sun java 1.5, 1.6, and openjdk-6
- Windows XP and Vista

The web interface at ​http://localhost:59125 should work with any recent browser that supports AJAX.
We have obtained best results with:
- Firefox 3.5 with built-in audio support
- Firefox 3.0, Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Safari 4, with Quicktime plugin

Known issues
- On Ubuntu Linux with sun java 1.5 and 1.6, we observed a problem with audio playback in the MARY client:
the final section is cut off. With openjdk-6, it works ok.
- On Ubuntu Linux 8.10 with the builtin Firefox 3.0, the audio plugin doesn't work properly.
- Web interface in the browser Chrome suboptimal:
Chrome does not seem to handle the HTML 5 `<audio>` tag correctly.
It claims it can handle it, but then doesn't play audio.
Click on "Save audio file" to get the raw audio data.

Bug reports

This is beta software.
It is not yet ready for production use.
You are likely to find problems, and we would appreciate if you tell us about it.

If you think you have identified a bug, proceed as follows:
1. Check in the [list of known bugs](http://mary.opendfki.de/query?group=status&amp;milestone=4.0) whether the bug has been reported already;
2. If you cannot find it, create a [new ticket](http://mary.opendfki.de/newticket) containing the following information:
- operating system and java version used;
- what to do to reproduce the error;
- expected behaviour;
- detailed log files, i.e. an excerpt of MARY TTS/log/server.log containing the error episode.
3. Discuss the problem on the [​MARY user mailing list](http://www.dfki.de/mailman/listinfo/mary-users).

Contributions

People interested in adding support for a language can get in touch, e.g. via the ​[MARY developers mailing list](http://www.dfki.de/mailman/listinfo/mary-dev).