@fastfinge The openevv project now has a PR to take care of the sample rate issues. Could you please incorporate it into Eloquence 64's openevv section for testing? Add a wideband voice, and do everything above 11,025 in whole numbers: github.com/Mudb0y/openevv/actions/runs/37492982819
@amir Is there any reason this has a checkbox? I'm struggling to understand why anyone would set a sample rate above 11025 kHz and want wideband off? I don't even understand why openEVV made this a setting. Is there any reason to not just have it always on?
@fastfinge There is one, I repeat, one, edge case where you might do this - You have a DAC that has terrible resampling and you want the 11 KHZ sound to not alias. Some integrated systems qualify. @amir
@amir@nick My worry is that too many checkboxes will confuse 99 percent of users, and then we get to spend the rest of our lives answering questions about why resampling doesn't work, or what that checkbox is for.
@fastfinge Which is why if I were you, I wouldn't implement it in the Eloquence addon. What lives in EVV upstream doesn't have to live in the addon. @amir
@nick@amir Okay. I'm in the middle of some work stuff this afternoon, but I'll get to this tomorrow morning, unless one of you gets to it first. When building for any purpose other than release, eloquence_64 already automatically downloads the latest openEVV commit artifact. And the samplerate code is already there. So it's literally just a matter of adding the ECI setting and rebuilding. Then waiting to do an actual release until OpenEVV gets the feature into a release on there end.
@nick@amir It sounds like regular eloquence, but while it's talking, someone else has shown up to do horrible whispering ASMR directly in your ears overtop of it.
@fastfinge@nick Oh yeah! Damned got it! But compared with what we already have in other Eloquence 64 variants, or even in the older IBMTTS driver with ViaVoice, it's terrible.
@fastfinge@nick Honestly - and as I see it now and even as someone who sort of likes higher sample rates, the major issue holding openevv back is related to maddeningly troublesome ViaVoice quirks. Oddly enough, some appear to prefer ViaVoice to Eloquence. But I'm not one of them.
@amir Those people are going to hold this back, because nobody seems interested in playing the long game. I'm hoping to God Stanislaw is. The goal should be to be Eloquence or better without any need for Delta. @fastfinge
@amir@nick Same. I was sort of hoping that the ViaVoice quirks would either be fixed or made configurable, before any sample rate stuff happened. I think mudb0y just has so many people asking for so many different things right now, but hasn't quite developed the skill to say "no" or "later" to anyone. If I were him, I'd work with someone (even a non-programmer) to help him prioritize all the different things, develop a roadmap, and be the one to say "we're not doing this now, see the roadmap" for him, so he can focus on the actual work.
@fastfinge That requires discipline. I am not convinced he has it. Remember, in the midst of all of this, he decided to reverse engineer BestSpeech for...some reason. @amir
@nick@amir I can see that actually being a useful thing to do. Bestspeech is a much simpler engine than eloquence, so someone could probably learn and practice a lot of useful techniques on it. And I think it's more about...thoughtfulness than disciplin. Something it takes every good programmer (or every good person) years to learn. He does seem to stick with things and keep grinding away on them. But like, if you're not spending more time thinking about your changes than actually making your changes, well, you'll add that extra sample rate setting that nobody needs.
@fastfinge I really want to be wrong. Amir, you might actually be the most discipline out of the lot of us in documenting Eloquence behaviors, as it's part of your roll re: community dictionary. Can you write up all the differences you can find? It might be a good idea to create these in an issue and call them as regressions - given what Sam's Dad has to say about working at IBM, I'm comfortable with that designation. @amir
@nick@amir Honestly someone just needs to find a way to get Amir access to Claude Code or Codex. He could quickly fix so many things; he knows exactly what needs to happen and why in most cases.
@fastfinge That's an idea we should keep in our hats for now. Weirdly, I'm a touch hesitant that we should be digging in just yet because Stanislaw's agents already have processes and I'm not convinced they're documented in a way we can yet follow. At least, the docs intimidate me a bit anyway. If Stanislaw becomes unmoved for a time after the docs, then we'll talk about figuring out how to give Amir computing power to take a run at this. @amir
@nick@amir Yeah, that makes sense. Once I can get employed again I'm happy to throw a bit in the hat. Just...not until then, sadly. Though I do have prospects, so we shall see.
@fastfinge Yeah, I myself would feel more comfortable committing to someone's Claude Max for a month come Q1 27. Sam, you and i can discuss beforehand how to get around any possible geoblocking, E.G. putting a VM somewhere. @amir
@nick@amir Yeah, we could do that as well. I actually have used nano-gpt.com in the past, though, and they're reliable. In that case it was because OpenAI wanted my ID for age verification and I wasn't interested in giving them my passport.
@fastfinge@nick Thanks. I'm trying to get either of those, but the sanctions are making it more difficult to pay for them. I know that Claud is almost out of the question as a few months ago it suddenly decided to ban Iranians who made an attempt to pay for it. But ChatGPT seems to be more lenient, at least for now.
@amir@nick Can you access nano-gpt.com? They offer the claude and gpt models, and they take payment via cryptocurrency. It's quite possible to configure either claude code or codex to use nano-gpt.com, so no problem there.
@nick@fastfinge LOL - let me take it as a compliment! But seriously, sure. I'll put my best foot forward to do that to document every difference I know.
@amir@nick Nick, how are you fixed for tokens? If Amir puts together the list, I'm tempted to just have Claude grind away at it and just submit a bunch of PR's to openevv. Unfortunately I'm between jobs, so three quarters of my tokens go to formatting resumes and stuff.
@nick@fastfinge@amir Excuse me for butting into this conversation, and I have no idea if this is worth anything in this context, but don't forget about the Eloquence Research Findings posts by @MutedTrampet
@jaybird110127 I didn't forget it and it's interesting fact, but I think Amir should still develop his own cross reference comparison. That post is a bit more general knowledge, there is a reason I didn't actively refer to it in this conversation. What we want is a lot colder, a lot more clinical. @fastfinge@amir@MutedTrampet
@nick@fastfinge Update: my first draft documenting 7 issues is ready. Of course, the first glitch sort of affects both of them in different ways. I'm sure there are other ViaVoice glitches, but I wanted to get the ball rolling. It would be great to also have others contribute to this. If you also give me hints here, I'll expand them for the document. Let me know if this format is suitable. Behavioral Differences Between Original ETI Eloquence and IBM ViaVoice wormhole.app/mMaK60#FC46fwVcmoKoTImQM-5Tew
@nick@fastfinge Also worth mentioning that the Community Dictionary hasn't targeted ViaVoice. If we're to adopt openevv one day, I'll make adjustments to ENURoot to also cover those ViaVoice quirks like composed, unread, and chased.
@amir@nick@fastfinge So adding any of the dictionaries to the android version of EVV will not fix those pronunciations? I installed it on the orbit player.
@jpellis2008@nick@fastfinge No. The Community Dictionary targets Eloquence. But ALTIBM dictionary, which is a really small project compared with the Community Dictionary, also targets ViaVoice. As mentioned, it's not as comprehensive as Community Dictionary, though.
@amir@nick Can eloquence dictionary files have comments? If so, I would suggest adding some way to have a dictionary entry that OpenEVV would process, but eloquence would ignore.
@fastfinge@nick Well, commenting hasn't been documented in the original Eloquence HLP file covering the dictionary. But this is something I should take a stab at.
@amir@nick@fastfinge my aim is to actually fix mispronunciations in openevv it self, so we can stop relying on dictionaries. If you're ok with me using the comunity dicts as a source I'll get on to doing that once the pressing issues are delt with, or along side other work
@Mudb0y You can fix the g2p rules to be better if you want but never remove support for dictionaries. There will always be foreign lonewords, names, internet slang, jargon, or other things that simply must be supplied in a dictionary, and taking that away from users is a net loss. @amir@nick@fastfinge
@Mudb0y@nick@amir I think we'll always need dictionaries though. We already have two sets, because people can't always agree on what's correct. I think there are certainly some issues that should get fixed in OpenEVV. But some should remain for dictionaries. I'm just not sure how that line should be expressed. Amir, do you have thoughts about this? Is there a way to make a systematic decisions about what rules are so general and useful they should get fixed in OpenEVV, and what should be left as a dictionary?
@fastfinge@nick@Mudb0y Honestly, I think it would be best not to touch the pronunciation rules. They’re so murky and problematic that if we try to fix something like the neuro- prefix rule, we might end up breaking something that was already working properly.
@amir@fastfinge@nick I don't know about that, I think there's room for experimentation here now that we actually have the power to do it. We obviously don't want to take crack like IBM did and go yolo on the rules, but stock dictionary entries and rule changes which make sense I think are fair game.
@amir@fastfinge@nick@Mudb0y What I'd probably say on this is that if there's a word where the default pronunciation is definitely incorrect in all cases, and adding an exception will fix this particular word without messing up other things, it should probably be added.
@Mudb0y@nick@fastfinge The problem is that at this stage at least, the Community Dictionary doesn't target ViaVoice. It just covers ETI Eloquence. ALTIBM does, but it's quite small by comparison. I can prepare a variant of the Community Dictionary for you. But I still suggest keeping pronunciation fixes out of the project PRs as people might want to add their own pronunciation flavors to the mix.
@amir What you could maybe fix is the entire clusterfuck that created St. Louis, though. That caused a huge debate in one of the community dictionary issues and the French Louis actually lost! If you can make it better distinguish when it should be each form that one can become part of OpenEVV. @Mudb0y@nick@fastfinge
@x0@Mudb0y@nick@fastfinge LOL - I remember that! I removed Louis mostly to keep St. Louis in tact. And since we have a space here, it can't be fixed by Eloquence/ ViaVoice dictionaries. Unless, of course, we cover St. Louis in openevv to make room for other Louis corrections in the dictionary.
@nick@amir This is exactly what's needed. Should be easy for whomever has the tokens first to get this into AI, have it create test plans for all the issues, then start working on fixes. Test plans should probably involve generating samples for humans to listen to and compare, as well as its own testing. I'm out of Claude tokens until Monday, sadly. So it won't be me yet.
