Festival

Synthesizing Voice From the Command Line Linux Journal by Mitch Frazier

I don't do a lot of audio/video stuff with my system, but the other day I had the urge to see if there was some voice synthesis software available on Linux and it turned out that I already had it installed: it's called Festival. Turns out there are a number of voice synthesis and analysis packages available.

Festival is, according to the website:

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 [sic] 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.

As far as simple commands, Festival comes with two: saytime and text2wave. Saytime does what you would expect, it speaks the time (as well as outputting the spoken text to stdout). Note though, the time that is output tends to be less than specific:

$ saytime
The time is now, just after half past 10, in the morning.

A wave file of the output is attached (time.wav).

The second command that comes with Festival is text2wave which converts text read from stdin to a .wav file output:

$ echo Your job has completed | text2wave >job.wav
$ aplay job.wav

# OR
$ echo Your job has completed | text2wave | aplay

The wave file is attached (job.wav).

If these commands do not exist on your system you will need to install the festival package. For other voice related packages search the web or check the list here on linux-sound.org

RPM is available on RHEL4 is festival-1.4.2-25.i386.rpm

Asterisk festival installation - voip-info.org

Festival is a text-to-speech application that is callable from within Asterisk. Voice is rather rough, but usable.

The current version of Festival as of this page update is 1.95beta.
Festival can be downloaded from http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival

There are a few ways to Setup Festival with Asterisk:

• The first one is to use a standard installation of Festival and modify the festival configuration file. (Easiest way)
• The second one is to patch the source-code to add a special asterisk command.
• The third one is the use an external perl script to call Festival.

The first method is probably the easiest, as it doesn't involve installing Asterisk perl library or having to recompile Festival, but it's up to you which method you choose.

Method 1 : To Use a standard Festival Installation by only modifying the Festival configuration file

Step 1: Install Festival from the RPM or DEB or source tarball.

Step 2: Find the file festival.scm (should be in /etc, may also be hidden in /usr/share/festival, /usr/lib/festival or /usr/local/lib/festival) and add this command to it:

 

;; Enable access to localhost (needed by debian users)
(set! server_access_list '("localhost\\.localdomain" "localhost"))

;; set italian voice (comment the following 2 lines to use british_american)
(language_italian)
(set! voice_default 'voice_pc_diphone)

;;; Command for Asterisk begin

(define (tts_textasterisk string mode)
"(tts_textasterisk STRING MODE)
Apply tts to STRING. This function is specifically designed for
use in server mode so a single function call may synthesize the string.
This function name may be added to the server safe functions."
"the line below is shown incorrectly in this wiki 1 hour wasted :( add two brackets before wholeutt and at the end of the line"
(let wholeutt (utt.synth (eval (list 'Utterance 'Text string)))
(utt.wave.resample wholeutt 8000)
(utt.wave.rescale wholeutt 5)
(utt.send.wave.client wholeutt)))

;;; Command for Asterisk end
 

Place this chunk anywhere within that file, except between other parentheses. ;-)
Then restart the Festival server.

This code should work both with Festival 1.95 and the older 1.4.3, which is still shipped with many Linux distributions.

 

Debian Sarge - Festival Deb - Festival Access List - You may have to modify your Festival configuration with the following changes in order for this to work using Debian Sarge with the Festival deb package. (contributed by dsfr, aka Chris Hozian):

(set! server_access_list '("localhost\\.localdomain" "localhost"))

;;This will add both localhost.localdomain and localhost to the access list. You should use the init script provided by the Festival deb in order to start Festival correctly to function with Asterisk.
 

alternative you can make sure that localhost is the first entry on /etc/hosts i.e 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain pbx pbx.mydomain

 

The option usecache=yes caused asterisk to crash on Debian with stock festival packages. Festival log showed an accepted connection, and then an immediate disconnect. After asterisk would sound "very funny" eventually resulting in a system crash. These same symptoms have been reported in the comments below. Changing usecache to no solved this issue. Asterisk had full read write permissions on the cache directory, and was infact writing data there.
 

Method 2 : Install Festival From Source with patching of the source-code

Using this method, the Festival source code requires a simple patch that is available in the standard /usr/src/asterisk distribution/cvs , See Asterisk CVS.

 

Downloading Festival

First you need to download the various source tar.gz files for Festival ...

What to download: check the readme files at the site for specific files associated with different countries. Be careful to watch the licensing, not every language file is allowed for commercial use.
For US/English, start with:
 

• festival-1.4.3-release.tar.gz
• festlex_CMU.tar.gz
• festlex_POSLEX.tar.gz
• festvox_kallpc16k.tar.gz
• speech_tools-1.2.3-release.tar.gz

Installation steps:

 cd /usr/src ; assumes the downloaded files are located here
 tar xvzf speech_tools-1.2.3-release.tar.gz
 cd speech_tools
 ./configure
 make

 cd ..

 tar xvzf festival-1.4.3-release.tar.gz
 tar xvzf festlex_CMU.tar.gz
 tar xvzf festlex_POSLEX.tar.gz
 tar xvzf festvox_kallpc16k.tar.gz
 cd festival
 patch -p1 </usr/src/asterisk/contrib/festival-1.4.3-diff (or wherever the patch is on your sys) 
 ./configure
 make

Note: an anonymous user has mentioned the they had to run the above 'patch' command BEFORE cd'n into the festival directory with Festival version 1.95beta.

Note: If compiling using gcc>2.95? you may need to use this patch http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2004-May/045134.html
 

Starting Festival

Debian (Sarge) users only have to edit /etc/init.d/festival and comment out
the line which reads "exit 0". Then run "/etc/init.d/festival start" to start the
server.

Note: The festival startup script can be run from the command line but it requires your path statement to include the location of the festival/bin directory, regardless from where you start it. To run festival from a system startup script, please review carefully the /usr/src/festival/bin/festival_server script and modify as needed.

 export PATH=$PATH:/usr/src/festival/bin

• To start festival: /usr/src/festival/bin/festival_server
• Alternative manual start: /usr/src/festival/bin/festival --server

Note: regardless of where you are in your system when you issue the above command, that startup script will detect your exact location and write a festival_server.log file (and pid files) in that location.
The log file is useful for error messages, therefore pay attention to exactly which directory you happen to be in when you issue the above command. (Or, modify the startup script accordingly.)

Method 3 The Alternative approach using a Perl Script

by Donny Kavanagh (as posted on asterisk-users in Oct 2004)
I�m not sure if this is a bug, or if I�m doing something wrong but I followed the instructions on the wiki for festival, I installed 1.4.3 applied two patches, one for it not compiling on fedora core2 (newer gcc) as well as one patch to make it work with cmd Festival. This seemed to work well however, it only works when called via the zaptel card. When I call via sip, I would see the Festival cmd execute on the cli, but I heard nothing, and the sip call hung up.

I ended up writing an agi myself which I believe will run on an unpatched copy of festival. It also works fine on both versions I have on my system 1.4.3 as well as 1.95beta.

Note that this AGI scsript requires the Asterisk perl library. You do not need to start the Festival server for this to work!

Here's an example snippet for your extensions.conf:

  exten => 1234,1,Answer
  exten => 1234,2,AGI(festival-script.pl|Welcome to the wonderful world of Asterisk! Your phone number is ${CALLERIDNUM}.)
  exten => 1234,3,Hangup

festival-script.pl (to be placed into /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/)
 

 #!/usr/bin/perl

 #make a tts dir inside your sounds dir (as specified below)
 #adjust the t2wp variable to point to your festival bin directory

 use Asterisk::AGI;
 use File::Basename;
 use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
  
 $AGI = new Asterisk::AGI;
 
 my %input = $AGI->ReadParse();
 my ($text)=@ARGV;
 my $hash = md5_hex($text);
 my $sounddir = "/var/lib/asterisk/sounds/tts";
 my $wavefile = "$sounddir/"."tts-$hash.wav";
 my $t2wp= "/root/www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/download/festival/1.95/festival/bin/";
  
 unless (-f $wavefile) {
         open(fileOUT, ">$sounddir"."/say-text-$hash.txt");
         print fileOUT "$text";
         close(fileOUT);

         my $execf=$t2wp."text2wave $sounddir/say-text-$hash.txt -F 8000 -o $wavefile";
         system($execf);
        unlink($sounddir."/say-text-$hash.txt");
 }
 $AGI->stream_file('tts/'.basename($wavefile,".wav"));
 

Thanks to Donny for his script above, but I had to make some changes to make it work on my system with festival v1.4.2 (Fedora Core 2):

festival-script.pl (to be placed into /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/)
 

#!/usr/bin/perl

#make a tts dir inside your sounds dir (as specified below)
#adjust the t2wp variable to point to your festival bin directory

use Asterisk::AGI;
use File::Basename;
use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
  
$AGI = new Asterisk::AGI;
 
my %input = $AGI->ReadParse();
my ($text)=@ARGV;
my $hash = md5_hex($text);
my $sounddir = "/var/lib/asterisk/sounds/tts"; 
my $wavefile = "$sounddir/"."tts-$hash.wav";
my $t2wp= "/usr/bin/";
  
unless (-f $wavefile) {
        open(fileOUT, ">$sounddir"."/say-text-$hash.txt");
        print fileOUT "$text";
        close(fileOUT);
        my $execf=$t2wp."text2wave -F 8000 -o $wavefile $sounddir/say-text-$hash.txt";
        system($execf);
        unlink($sounddir."/say-text-$hash.txt");
}
$AGI->stream_file('tts/'.basename($wavefile,".wav")); 

unlink($wavefile);

 

Setting Up the Asterisk configuration files

Edit the /etc/asterisk/festival.conf file and ensure the following statements are uncommented (these are used by asterisk):

 [general]
 host=localhost
 port=1314
 usecache=yes 
 cachedir=/var/cache/asterisk/festival/
 festivalcommand=(tts_textasterisk "%s" 'file)(quit)\n

The default value for cachedir depends on your distribution. Make sure that the directory exists and is writeable by Asterisk. Since this is only a performance cache, you can use /tmp as long as festival isn't reading back any privleged information.

Edit the extensions.conf file and include the following within your dial plan (for testing purposes):
 ; testing festival (text-to-speech app)
 exten => 555,1,Answer
 exten => 555,2,Festival(mary had a little lamb)  ; do NOT use quotes around the string! if you use commas, you will have to escape them with a "\" (backslash).
 exten => 555,3,Hangup  

 

• Restart asterisk

Note: asterisk has to be started "after" festival.

Troubleshooting:

• When a call is made to extension 555 (assuming you followed the above completely) and no voice is heard, check the contents of the festival_server.log file (wherever it is located on your system).

If you see a message such as:
 client(1) : rejected from myserver.mydomain.com not in access list
then edit the festival/bin/festival_server startup script to include that FQDM in the line with "localhost.*".

 

• If the festival_server.log contains an entry like:

client(1) : accepted from myserver.mydomain.com 
after a place a call to extension 555, then asterisk is making the call to festival.

 

• From the asterisk CLI interface, a properly executed and functional call to festival will look like this:

 — Executing Answer("SIP/3000-46a1", "") in new stack
 — Executing Festival("SIP/3000-46a1", "mary had a litte lamb") in new stack
 == Parsing '/etc/asterisk/festival.conf': Found
 WARNING1209269552: File app_festival.c, Line 304 (festival_exec): Text passed to  festival server : mary had a little lamb
 WARNING1209269552: File app_festival.c, Line 381 (festival_exec): Passing text to  festival...
 WARNING1209269552: File app_festival.c, Line 400 (festival_exec): Passing data to channel...
 WARNING1209269552: File app_festival.c, Line 410 (festival_exec): Festival WV command
 WARNING1209269552: File rtp.c, Line 374 (ast_rtp_read): RTP Read error: Resource temporarily unavailable
 WARNING1209269552: File app_festival.c, Line 202 (send_waveform_to_channel): Last frame
   — Executing Hangup("SIP/3000-46a1", "") in new stack

 

For German voices in Festival see http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/synthesis/festival_opensource.html

If you use German voices (The IMS Uni-Stuttgart version) and want to use the PHPAGI text2wav call, make sure the first line in $FESTIVAL_ROOT/lib/ims_german_opensource.scm is commented out like this:
 

/*(format t "German Festival 1.2-os (1.4.1)

: Release August 2000\n")*/

If you don't do this, the generated WAV files will contain this header before the RIFF tag, rendering them useless.

For a Dutch installation manual see http://www.voip-wiki.nl/doku.php?id=fest

Recommended Links

• Asterisk cmd festival: The Festival Application
• Asterisk config festival.conf: The configuration file for Festival in Asterisk
• Festival: The Open Source Speech synthesis software
• Asterisk flite: Flite can replace festival
• Asterisk AGI MacinTalk: AGI to call MacInTalk speech syntesis (for Apple/Mac!?)
• Sphinx: Open source speech recognition tool
• TTS: Text-toSpeech solutions
• ZOIP: Text adventure ZORK for Asterisk (with text-to-speech and voice recognition)
• Asterisk tips and tricks

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Last modified: March 12, 2019