Lame encoder no longer working in Voicebox

[bob2935]

Hello.  I recently put Rockbox on a new Gigabeat F40 and as a blind user, I am quite pleased with the accessibility.  However, after creating severaal .talk clips for files, I decided to experiment with speech synthesizers.  Somewhere along the way, Lame quit working and .talk files are empty and silent.  Everything else is fine because wave files are being created but not converted to mp3.  I went in to the properties of Lame.exe and received a message about the file being blocked.  I pressed the "unblock" button, the message went away but Lame still isn't working.  Finally, I deleted the Voicebox directory, re-downloaded and extracted the zip archive and it still doesn't work.  Does anyone here have any idea how I broke it?
Again, thank you for Rockbox and all its related programs.
Bob.

[bluebrother]

You don't want to use VoiceBox anymore. You want to use VoiceBox+ as all players except the archos ones now use speex for talk files. Btw, this has been announced in the MajorChanges wiki page ...

[bob2935]

Hello Bluebrother and others.  Thank you for responding.  I am actually using Voicebox+ without realizing that an earlier version of the program called "Voicebox" existed.  Also, the Zip archive creates a folder called "Voicebox" not "Voicebox+" confusing the issue further.  Believe me; I understand how annoying it can be when someone starts asking questions without reading the available docs and forum archives.  I have done plenty of research here before creating an account and I apologize to the experts if I forgot to read something important concerning my problem.  Rockbox works great and the user learning curve is in my opinion quite simple.  Voicebox+ worked fine then quit working fine which is why I am seeking assistance.

Having said all that, has anyone ever had trouble with the Lame encoder using Voicebox+?
Bob.

[bluebrother]

In that case I'm not sure if I understand your problem correctly: for what player are you trying to build voice files? Unless it's an archos player you need speex clips, and for that you don't need lame. Having that said I don't understand why you have problems with lame -- or is the mentioned F40 not the device you're trying to create talk clips for?

[bob2935]

Hello again.  The files are meant for the Gigabeat F40 and part of my problem explaining is that I misunderstood the "read me" file.  I now understand that rbspeexenc, not Lame is doing the encoding.  The wave files are being created but they are not being converted properly to mp3 for the .talk clips although the log file seems to say otherwise.  Today, I have been using a test folder on my harddrive instead of my player and I don't remember if the successful files encoded on Friday were done with the Gigabeat connected to the computer.

After trying again with the Gigabeat connected, everything seems to be fine again.  Perhaps it has something to do with my choice to use a non-Microsoft voice but they work on the player.  The moral seems to be that if you are encoding .talk clips with different voices, do not try to play them back in Winamp or Windows Media Player for testing, even if you rename the files.

Thank you very much Bluebrother for helping me think this through and get satisfying results.
Bob.

[bluebrother]

The wave files are being created but they are not being converted properly to mp3 for the .talk clips

The talk files are not mp3 anymore.

The moral seems to be that if you are encoding .talk clips with different voices, do not try to play them back in Winamp or Windows Media Player for testing, even if you rename the files.

As I said before, talk files are no longer mp3. They are speex, and it's an adjusted speex especially for Rockbox. If you want to check them you need to use rbspeexdec -- it isn't possible playing them back with a standard media player.

[bob2935]

Well, that makes sense.  Different encoder, different file type.  I learned a lot and I didn't give up.  Thanks again for the education.
Bob.