espeak pitch sometimes increases unexpectedly

[LeonarddeR]

Steps to reproduce:

No reliable str. It seems to pop up after a moment where uppercase letters have been read.

Actual behavior:

The overall pitch of espeak seems to increase. This isn't a natural pitch increase, but sounds more like the audio produced by espeak is played on a higher sample rate.

Expected behavior:

pitch will be constant.

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

Installed

NVDA version:

alpha-18604

Windows version:

Windows 10 Version 1903 (OS Build 18970.1005)

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

N/a

Other information about your system:

n/a

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your PC?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

Seems to be in all recent Alpha versions.

[XLTechie]

Can you resolve this by typing a Capital followed by a lowercase letter? If so, that is a problem I know well from Linux versions of eSpeak, going back at least as far as 1.43.03.

[Brian1Gaff]

Yes sometimes sounds like a yodel. I noted this happens a bit on other screenreaders if espeak is installed as sapi 5 though, and sometimes it goes the other way, into monotone, so are we sure this is nvda or Espeak? I suppose it could be both or either! Brian bglists@blueyonder.co.uk Sent via blueyonder. Please address personal E-mail to:- briang1@blueyonder.co.uk, putting 'Brian Gaff' in the display name field. Newsgroup monitored: alt.comp.blind-users

[codeofdusk]

I've seen this too, post speech refactor.

[LeonarddeR]

I've seen this too, post speech refactor.

I'm thus not sure whether this is post speech refactor or also occurred before. Honestly, I always used Nuance Vocalizer pre speech refactor and switched to Espeak mainly due to speech refactor.

[LeonarddeR]

Ugh, github reordered the close and comment/comment buttons. I"m sorry.

[LeonarddeR]

Can you resolve this by typing a Capital followed by a lowercase letter?

Yes.

If so, that is a problem I know well from Linux versions of eSpeak, going back at least as far as 1.43.03.

Thanks for pointing this out. I will label this needs external fix.

[alex19EP]

i think espeak-ng/espeak-ng#975 is upstream issue for this.

[seanbudd]

is this still an issue @LeonarddeR given espeak-ng/espeak-ng#975 has been closed and integrated into NVDA?

[LeonarddeR]

I'm afraid it is, though I haven't tested extensively with the newest alpha builds. I will report back later this week.
Note that it's strictly spoken not an issue with pitch, but more likely an issue with sample rate, i.e. it sounds like the audio is playing too fast.

[seanbudd]

is your inclination that it is still an issue with eSpeak or NVDA? seems like this bug will be hard to hunt down

[LeonarddeR]

According to @XLTechie, this also happens on linux versions of ESpeak.b

[seanbudd]

That comment was from several years ago, @XLTechie, do you know if this is still an issue with the linux version of eSpeak?
I would suggest re-raising this issue with eSpeak then.

[XLTechie]

That comment was from several years ago, @XLTechie, do you know if this is still an issue with the linux version of eSpeak?

Sadly, I do not. I have experienced both of the problems described in this thread, but don't know whether the changes in eSpeak have rectified either of them in Linux or Windows. They were rare to begin with, in Windows, as far as I knew, and I could never come up with a guaranteed STR for either of them. My Linux copies of eSpeak are all much older than anything current.

[LeonarddeR]

I experienced the issue this very morning so it's definitely not fixed yet.

[Adriani90]

@LeonarddeR the referenced upstream issue from eSpeak above is solved here:
espeak-ng/espeak-ng#1515

I suspect this should work now in NVDA without problems right? At least after eSpeak submodule has been updated I think in NVDA 2023.1.

[LeonarddeR]

I've still been able to repro this very recently.