6.4 Checking an installation

Once compiled and site initialization is set up you should test to see if Festival can speak or not.

Start the system

$ bin/festival
Festival Speech Synthesis System 1.4.3:release Jan 2003
Copyright (C) University of Edinburgh, 1996-2003. All rights reserved.
For details type `(festival_warranty)'
festival> ^D

If errors occur at this stage they are most likely to do with pathname problems. If any error messages are printed about non-existent files check that those pathnames point to where you intended them to be. Most of the (default) pathnames are dependent on the basic library path. Ensure that is correct. To find out what it has been set to, start the system without loading the init files.

$ bin/festival -q
Festival Speech Synthesis System 1.4.3:release Jan 2003
Copyright (C) University of Edinburgh, 1996-2003. All rights reserved.
For details type `(festival_warranty)'
festival> libdir
"/usr/lib/festival"
festival> datadir
"/usr/share/festival"
festival> ^D

This should show the pathname you set in your config/config.

If the system starts with no errors try to synthesize something

festival> (SayText "hello world")

Some files are only accessed at synthesis time so this may show up other problem pathnames. If it talks, you’re in business, if it doesn’t, here are some possible problems.

If you get the error message

Can't access NAS server

You have selected NAS as the audio output but have no server running on that machine or your DISPLAY or AUDIOSERVER environment variable is not set properly for your output device. Either set these properly or change the audio output device in lib/festival.scm as described above.

Ensure your audio device actually works the way you think it does. On Suns, the audio output device can be switched into a number of different output modes, speaker, jack, headphones. If this is set to the wrong one you may not hear the output. Use one of Sun’s tools to change this (try /usr/demo/SOUND/bin/soundtool). Try to find an audio file independent of Festival and get it to play on your audio. Once you have done that ensure that the audio output method set in Festival matches that.

Once you have got it talking, test the audio spooling device.

festival> (intro)

This plays a short introduction of two sentences, spooling the audio output.

Finally exit from Festival (by end of file or (quit)) and test the script mode with.

$ examples/saytime

A test suite is included with Festival but it makes certain assumptions about which voices are installed. It assumes that voice_rab_diphone (festvox_rabxxxx.tar.gz) is the default voice and that voice_ked_diphone and voice_don_diphone (festvox_kedxxxx.tar.gz and festvox_don.tar.gz) are installed. Also local settings in your /etc/festival.scm may affect these tests. However, after installation it may be worth trying

gnumake test

from the festival/ directory. This will do various tests including basic utterance tests and tokenization tests. It also checks that voices are installed and that they don’t interfere with each other. These tests are primarily regression tests for the developers of Festival, to ensure new enhancements don’t mess up existing supported features. They are not designed to test an installation is successful, though if they run correctly it is most probable the installation has worked.