MARY TTS 4.0 beta -- Release Notes

What's new

MARY 4.0 is a major cleanup over previous versions of MARY TTS.

• 100% Pure Java. All native libraries have been removed from the system. MARY should now run on any platform that has Java 1.5 or newer.
• Fully open source. All code is now open source, and voices are distributed under Creative Commons licenses.
• New languages. We have added Turkish and Telugu synthesis for now, and more languages will be added in the future.

MARY now comes with a toolkit for people who want to add support for new languages. There is detailed documentation for

• creating initial support for a new language;
• recording and building a unit selection voice; and
• creating an HMM-based voice from the same recordings.

Tested environments

The MARY client and server code was tested on:

• Mac OS X (Intel) 10.5.8 with java 1.6.0_07
• Ubuntu Linux 8.10 with sun java 1.5, 1.6, and openjdk-6
• Windows XP and Vista

The web interface at ​http://localhost:59125 is working well with:

• Firefox 3.5 (tested on Mac, Linux)
• Firefox 3.0 with Quicktime plugin

Known issues

• On Ubuntu Linux with sun java 1.5 and 1.6, we observed a problem with audio playback in the MARY client: the final section is cut off. With openjdk-6, it works ok.
• On Ubuntu Linux 8.10 with the builtin Firefox 3.0, the audio plugin doesn't work properly.