Troubleshooting speech problems

Sensory Software programs are supplied with Acapela speech voices.  If you are having trouble with the voices responding slowly, here are some suggestions that you could look into.

Installation

Is the software installed on a normal hard disk, or are you running it from a flash card? If you are running from a flash card, it is important to use a fast card. We currently use Sandisk Extreme IV.

Compressed Folders

When disk space runs low, Windows compresses some folders. This can slow down file access. In Windows Explorer, these folders may be displayed in blue:

• C:Program FilesSensory SoftwareCommonSpeechAcapela
• C:WINDOWSsystem32
•  C:Program FilesSensory SoftwareThe Grid 2

If so the folders are compressed and you should uncompress them. (Right click to get the folder properties and then click the 'Advanced' button by the Read Only and Hidden attributes.)

Security software

Is there any virus checkers or firewall software installed? If so can you try uninstalling it and try again. We have experienced problems on a couple of computers running the McAfee spam checker.
Some versions of this seem to have problems if there are a lot of old emails in the spam or deleted messages folders.

Other Processes

If you start task manager and go to the 'Processes' tab and then click the top of the CPU colum twice it will list the processes on the machine by ther CPU load. When you are not trying to speak, you should see System Idle Process at the top showing about 95% or more. Does task manager show anything else taking the CPU?

Switch to/retry

You may see a message saying that Sensory Speech is not responding, and offering the options "switch to" or "retry", when a voice takes longer than 5 seconds to load. It normally only occurs when the voice first loads and then only on low spec embedded machines.

Use other voices

If none of the above solve the problem it may be worth experimenting with other voices. There are significant variations between the Acapela voices. Many of the older SAPI voices such as Realspeak and Dectalk make much smaller demands on the CPU.