A couple of quick questions?

[Rick Tinker]

Between this forum, Blade's own forums, and a Google search of all of those, I think I just had too many returns to find the answer to these questions; the documentation was no help either...

1. (Super Easy) To use the Russound integration, is an audio output connected to the paging input of the Russound or one of the Source zones of the Russound?

2. Trying to get it so that my system plays a WAV audio file prior to it speaking anything. In the pre-speak event, I added an action to have it play a WAV file, but it never played. When I added the WAV file as a speak action (giving it the filename of the WAV file) it processed the TTS before the WAV file so it played after. What exactly is the best way to make this happen? I did try checking the option to have it ignore the processing of WAV files. This is the latest version of the plug-in updated today.

[Blade]

1. (Super Easy) To use the Russound integration, is an audio output connected to the paging input of the Russound or one of the Source zones of the Russound?

I know others are using Russound integration. In the plugin help web page take a look at the Processing tags area. I know they use tags for their speaking when integrating with Russound.

In BLSpeech you can set up individual speakers as well as zones of speakers. I am sure they will respond and give a few examples of what they are doing but you can use those processing tags to change speakers/zones, play a sound file prior to speaking as well as control volume.

2. Trying to get it so that my system plays a WAV audio file prior to it speaking anything. In the pre-speak event, I added an action to have it play a WAV file, but it never played. When I added the WAV file as a speak action (giving it the filename of the WAV file) it processed the TTS before the WAV file so it played after. What exactly is the best way to make this happen? I did try checking the option to have it ignore the processing of WAV files. This is the latest version of the plug-in updated today.

Someone else is having the exact same issue. The plugin is playing the wave but HS3 seems to be trying to play it from a different path and that is why it is not playing the file. I believe he put in a bug ticket with you guys about it. Hopefully he can reply here with more info on it.

[Rick Tinker]

I know others are using Russound integration. In the plugin help web page take a look at the Processing tags area. I know they use tags for their speaking when integrating with Russound.

In BLSpeech you can set up individual speakers as well as zones of speakers. I am sure they will respond and give a few examples of what they are doing but you can use those processing tags to change speakers/zones, play a sound file prior to speaking as well as control volume.

That says nothing about the very specific question I have about how the audio gets from HomeSeer to the Russound.

Someone else is having the exact same issue. The plugin is playing the wave but HS3 seems to be trying to play it from a different path and that is why it is not playing the file. I believe he put in a bug ticket with you guys about it. Hopefully he can reply here with more info on it.

But if you use the speak action, and give a filename as what to speak, then that gets passed through the audio proxy like anything else, and that is where your feature to bypass processing should take hold and pass it right through to HomeSeer so that it gets spoken right away. Right? Did you test that when you implemented it? If so, how did you test?

[Blade]

BLSpeech uses hs.PlayWavFile to play a sound file. One user said it used to work in a previous build of HS3 but does not work now. BLSpeech has not changed how it does it.
Once the plugin does all pre-processing (sound files, volume changes, speaker switching) then it sends the speech to HS3

My brother-in-law has HS3 connected to one of his sources on the Russound

[S-F]

You need to play your wave file via the BLSpeech Sound special tag. Not some code with the TTS.

The issue Blade speaks of was introduced in .187 and was subsequently fixed. So make sure you use a newer build. The BLSpeech sound tag just uses speaker.exe to play the file.

I'm on my phone ATM, so please respond if I'm not clear or didn't answer your questions and I'll give a more verbose response later today.

[S-F]

I'm home now so I can think about this a little more.

#1) You don't use the paging input. You just connect your HS3 output to one of the sources. Then BLSpeech you select "return Russound to original state" and when it's done with its announcement it will go back to off or whatever source and volume, etc, it was at before.

#2)

You do this all with the BLSpeech special tags. In BLSpeech under sounds you add sounds by path and you name them. The name can be anything but it's what you use in the special tag to call that specific file.

Here's an example of the TTS I was using to test some BLSpeech issues recently: {speaker=Kitchen,source=2,volume=40,Sound=Chime}This is a test

Note the Sound=Chime. That plays my "Chime" sound before "This is a test" is spoken. See attached.