Festival Speech Synthesis System
The facts below are what the maker publishes about Festival Speech Synthesis System, checked and dated. Our editors have not written about it yet.
Plans and prices
From Festival Speech Synthesis System's own pricing page, checked 12 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Festival 2.4 | Free | Free software; voice and lexicon licenses may have restrictions |
The facts
Each one read from Festival Speech Synthesis System's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- API access
- Yeschecked 20 Sep 2026
- Build requirements
- Running Festival requires a C++ compiler and GNU Make.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Commercial use
- Yeschecked 20 Sep 2026
- Configuration
- Language modules can be configured for phonesets, lexicons, letter-to-sound rules, tokenizing, part-of-speech tagging, intonation, and duration.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Interfaces
- It provides interfaces through shell commands, a Scheme interpreter, C++ library, Java, and Emacs.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Languages
- The site lists British and American English, Spanish, and Welsh text-to-speech, and says English is the most advanced.checked 12 Oct 2026
- License
- Festival and the speech tools use an X11-type license that allows commercial and non-commercial use.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Maintainer context
- The Centre for Speech Technology Research is an interdisciplinary University of Edinburgh research centre founded in 1984.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Markup and integration
- The system lists SABLE markup, Emacs, client/server, and scripting interfaces.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- Festival is a framework for building speech synthesis systems and provides full text-to-speech functionality.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Source distribution
- The distribution includes full C++ source, a SIOD interpreter, Scheme library, Edinburgh Speech Tools, and documentation.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Support
- The project page links to Festival related mailing lists hosted by FestVox.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Voice building
- The project points to Carnegie Mellon’s FestVox project for tools and documentation to build new voices.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Voice engines
- Included waveform synthesis options include Multisyn, HTS, Clustergen, Clunits, diphone-based synthesis, and MBROLA database support.checked 12 Oct 2026
- Voice restrictions
- The download page notes that some voices have license restrictions and that the OALD UK lexicon is restricted to non-commercial use.checked 12 Oct 2026
Money
- Free plan
- Yeschecked 20 Sep 2026
The company
- Headquarters
- Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdomchecked 28 Sep 2026
Where it runs
- Platforms
- The download page requires a Unix-like environment and gives Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, and Cygwin under Windows as examples.checked 12 Oct 2026
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