PhatHack
Phatbox / Keg software and support => Phatnoise Media Manager => Topic started by: kbsilver on February 15, 2008, 05:33:55 pm
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I too finally took the plunge and updated to MS Vista. Everything I needed works fine except a cheapo multifunction printer (I'm just going to toss it), and OF COURSE PMM.
Downloaded the latest version, installed with no problem. Runs fine except I'm on the 30 day countdown till the trial registration expires. I have registration codes, but it will not take them (does nothing when I press the OK button). Have tried and modified the registration file using regedit as described. Modified fine, but had no effect.
Any other words of wisdom? I have 2 phatboxes in cars so tossing these is not an option.
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My words of Wisdom: Upgrade to Windows XP
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On further testing, it does NOT run fine. The DMS is not recognized by PMM at all. Vista sees it, both drives, but PMM doesn't. Also voice prompts do not seem like they will work. When you press the voice sample button, nothing happens. All pretty disappointing to me. Don't understand why Phatnoise took a very desired product and made it obsolete and drop support for it. Sheesh, all they had to do is keep a supply of larger DMS's available at a reasonable price and keep the interface compatible with newer versions of windows and they could still be making $$$ on it. The Phatbox unit itself was perfect as is.
Guess it's off to plan 'B'. It's not an 'upgrade' to XP, but do have other computers in the house still running W2000 pro. Just have to keep one of them around much longer than I wanted. I went nearly 7 hears on the same machine (no reload) before the upgrade. Actually jumped over XP, never used it.
Vista is running very well for me so have no reason to back grade on my main PC. PMM is now going to be removed. I've wasted way too much time on this already.
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Well, we can all complain about Phatnoise dropping support for everything, but the fact is they didn't run the business as well as they could have, and geeks like us who love our Phatboxes/Kegs will just have to learn to get along without them. We can only dream about what the Phatbox 2.0 could have been.
Anyway, I am running PMM 3.92 in Vista Ultimate x32 without any problems, except (like everything else in Vista) it runs more slowly than in XP, particularly during the save/eject procedure. I think quite a few people are running PMM in Vista.
(Since Vista does, as Sam has noted many times, suck, I am running a dual boot configuration with XP, which you might consider as an option. However, I think the easier way to get a dual boot configuration to work is to install XP first and then Vista.)
To bypass the registration issue, open regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Phatnoise, Inc\PMM, find the key Date_Installed, and just reset it once a month. You can also register at VorTechs' www.phatnoise.org (http://www.phatnoise.org) site and find permanent solutions for that issue in the downloads section.
One basic thing you have to do to get PMM working in Vista is find the PMM.exe, right click on it, go to advanced options, and tick "run as administrator." Voice prompts will also work, but you need to have the MS speech SDK installed. Do you have any voices listed in the voice prompt options? It will also work with the AT&T Natural Voices, if you have them, but it requires some trickery to get them to install on Vista. You can search for the solution in these forums.
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You're missing out... XP is much better than 2000, you just need to disable all the silly new interface crap ;)
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how do you setup voice prompts in vista? which MS speech sdk did you use? tks.
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The MS speech SDK is pre-installed on XP (SP1 and above I think) and Vista machines.
Then you just need to have a look around the options screen, I think under the Dictionary section to set the default prompt voice in PMM.
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When I goto Tools->Voice Prompts->Edit Dictionary
I only have one item under Voice, 'Microsoft Anna'. When I try to Save/Eject after I copy mp3's to my
DMS I get the error message >> 'can't assign stream format'. I even set the voice Anna to the default and it
still won't work. any ideas?
It also says 'unable to create voice prompt file'..
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Is Microsoft Anna the default Vista female voice? I forgot, I hardly use Vista these days since it kept tearing down my media center weekly.
Are there any other options under there to allow you to specify any additional parameters about the voice?
If so set it to 44khz, 8 bit mono and see if that improves the situation.
If that works, switch to 44khz, 16 bit mono. If you try to switch to 16 bit and it fails, then stick with 8 bit.
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Anna is the default Vista voice, and only voice preassigned to Vista. When you are saying to change the
options are you reffering to in the control panel or in pmm?
-any third party programs that would create voices i could add in manually?
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Do I need to install the AT&T engine for this to work? I read this on the phatnoise website:
'You must install the PhatNoise Media Manager (version 2.36 or earlier) from the CD you received with your PhatBox/Music Keg in order to have unlimited encoding and the AT&T Natural Voices Engine.'
http://www.phatnoise.com/downloads/download_pmmsw.aspx
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By settings, I mean in PMM... there's little you can change in the control panel (well, certainly in XP anyway)
The AT&T Engine only gives you the AT&T voices, which admittedly are better than the XP default voices. Not sure about Vista though as I've forgotten how that one sounds. It's also a PITA to install under Vista and requires a workaround (there's a thread lurking here somewhere about it).
If you don't have this, you can find it at Phatnoise.org in the downloads section - registration and valid e-mail address is required, you don't get to see the available downloads until you have successfully registered.
Any SAPI5 compliant voice pack/engine should be fine, I personally use the Loquendo voices which I found via some questionable sites.
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I found this post:
http://forum.phathack.com/index.php/topic,896.0.html
it says that you need to install the AT&T engine for it to work in Vista using the .msi file. I wonder if
this is what I need to get voice prompts to work correctly.
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Quite possibly...it may well be that PhatNoise Media Manager has issues with the Vista voice because it's not using generic methods to access the voice.
It certainly won't hurt to install and try it.
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It took a while to figure out how to make the voice prompts work using Windows Vista (x32 Ultimate) so I put together a set of instructions that should
help someone installing the Phatnoise Media Manager with Vista (and wants working 'voice prompts').
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How to Install PhatNoise Media Manager 3.76 with Microsoft Vista
This will allow you to use the ‘voice prompts’ and install the AT&T Natural Voice engine
in Vista. This is needed to use the ‘Voice Prompts’.
Get your hacked AT&T Natural Voice .msi file:
I went to google and found a file that basically bypasses the operating system option
which looks for a specific operating system (vista wasn’t out at the time).
www.brianjonesphotography.com/phat/ATTvoicehack.msi
Download PhatNoise Media Manager 3.76:
Again, google is your friend, http://www.phatnoise.com/
Now we need to set the permission on the .exe file we just downloaded:
1. Right-Click the exe, goto Properties.
2. Goto the Compatability tab.
3. Check that Windows XP SP2 is marked.
4. Run as Administrator needs to be checked also.
5. Click Apply, click Ok.
AT&T Labs' Natural Voices(tm) Desktop 1.2.1.msi
1)rename the hacked .MSI file from the beginning to the above name ^.
2)run the exe phatnoise media manager install program.
3)critical! when you see the ‘AT&T LABS’ Natural Voice™ Desktop 1.2.1.msi’ file
in the folder (c:\Program Files\Phatnoise..\) replace and move the hacked version
that we downloaded earlier into that folder.
4)after the install finishes, set the pmm.exe (in c:\Program Files\Phatnoise..) file to run in
Windows XP ‘SP2 compatible mode’. As well as ‘Run As Administrator’. Make sure both
are checked.
Now you should have working ‘Voice Prompts’ with your Phatnoise player using
Windows Vista ;)
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Thanks Lucky,
I was getting ready to chuck the Music Keg until I came across this post. It took some tinkereing, but I got it working. Just to clarify when to install the ATTvoicehack:
"You need to stop when the install says, it's about to install some components"
1) Copy the AT&T Labs'Natural Voices(tm) Desktop 1.2.1.msi to C:\Program Files\Phatnoise
2) Then go back to "about to install some components" and click OK. It does work.
Note: The file must read "AT&T Labs' Natural Voices(tm) Desktop 1.2.1.msi exactly or the install will error out.
Thanks, I'm keeping the Keg.
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I am also trying to get the Voice prompts working in Vista Ultimate 32 for my PhatNoise Box in my Audi.
Does anyone know if this fix will work with PHatnoise Media Manager 3.92? I can't seem to get it to work. I am unable to find a download for Phatnoise Media Manager 3.76. Does anyone have a link for that? Thanks.
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What are you having problems with, PMM or the voices?
I have 3.92 and ATT voices working just fine in Windows Vista Ultimate x32. You must have the Microsoft Speech SDK installed. See my earlier post in this thread.
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I too am having trouble getting PMM to make voice prompts. I followed LuckY07's instructions (with one exception: I didn't set Run as Administrator, because that option was disabled in the compatibility dialog). Everything seemed to go well, and when I did a save and eject from PMM, I did not get the "Can't create stream" error I was getting before. However, at the first attempt to create a voice prompt, PMM just hung. I had to kill it from task manager.
I had the same problem in PhatVoice. Even if I just asked it to pronounce a sample text, without creating any prompt files, if would hang if I used one of the AT&T voices. However, if I used the default Microsoft voice it could pronounce sample texts and create prompt files.
So, I have a sort-of working system, with PhatVoice and the MS voice, but I really would like to be able to use PMM and the AT&T voices. Obviously I didn't get AT&T NV installed in a workable way. Any suggestions?
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If the "run as administrator" box was disabled, it suggests you are not logged on as an administrator. To install everything successfully on Vista, make sure you are logged on with admin privileges. (Just to be sure, disable all that User Account Control crap.)
Moreover, even on Vista, you must install the Microsoft Speech SDK to get things working.
I also suggest a different method for installing the AT&T voices, which is roughly described in this post:
http://forum.phathack.com/index.php/topic,1037.msg6729.html#msg6729 (http://forum.phathack.com/index.php/topic,1037.msg6729.html#msg6729)
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If the "run as administrator" box was disabled, it suggests you are not logged on as an administrator. To install everything successfully on Vista, make sure you are logged on with admin privileges. (Just to be sure, disable all that User Account Control crap.)
I am logged on with admin privileges, and I have disabled UAC, and Run as Administrator is disabled.
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If the "run as administrator" box was disabled, it suggests you are not logged on as an administrator. To install everything successfully on Vista, make sure you are logged on with admin privileges. (Just to be sure, disable all that User Account Control crap.)
So, turns out the trick to getting it working is to do the opposite of what markbowen says ;). In order to enable the "Run as Administrator", you need to enable User Account Control. You can disable UAC again once you've set "Run as Administrator", and presumably you could also do the equivalent registry edit without mucking with UAC at all, but anyway, that's what it takes if you want to use the check box.
Moreover, even on Vista, you must install the Microsoft Speech SDK to get things working.
I have not installed the MS Speech SDK, and it is now working perfectly. ;D
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I'm making some progress. I enabled User Access Control, checked the Run as Administrator box, and reinstalled PMM 3.92. This time the program paused during install and I was able to insert the hacked ATT voices file during the install and the installation completed successfully. However, now the PMM does not recognize my DMS, giving me the message "error retrieving DMS drive ID", telling me to close Nortion, Media Player and Notepad. Any thoughts about this would be appreciated.
(As an aside I installed a Virtual machine using VMware 6.0 and installed XP and PMM 1.86 on the virtual machine. I can now run XP from within Vista and am able to add new songs, playlists and voice prompts on the DMS. Not an elegant solution but at least it works.... though I get a different voice.)
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Got it. All I needed to do was right click on the PMM desktop icon and select 'run as an administrator. Now PMM 3.92 in Vista is adding voice prompts to my Phatbox DMS in the Audi. There are even several different voices to select. It's too bad those guys ad Phatbox don't help us out with these fixes.
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So, turns out the trick to getting it working is to do the opposite of what markbowen says ;). In order to enable the "Run as Administrator", you need to enable User Account Control. You can disable UAC again once you've set "Run as Administrator", and presumably you could also do the equivalent registry edit without mucking with UAC at all, but anyway, that's what it takes if you want to use the check box. I have not installed the MS Speech SDK, and it is now working perfectly. ;D
Yes, always do the opposite of what I write. I'm from the Bizarro Phathack universe. :)
I don't know what to tell you. I disabled UAC immediately after installing Vista, because it was annoying the heck out of me, and installed PMM 3.92 and ran as administrator without issue. I was also getting stream errors when trying to create voice prompts until I installed the Speech SDK. That was just my experience. The only thing I can think of is that this was all pre-SP1. Assuming you have SP1 installed, that might account for the different issues.
Anyway, glad to see everyone is up and running and happy now.
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I'm from the Bizarro Phathack universe. :)
I knew I'd seen you somewhere before.... ;D
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Ok, I tried this but I'm still getting "speak failed" messages.
I "set as admin", "run in compatibility mode", and installed MICrosoft SDK as well. Did the AT&T speil also.
Any ideas on what else to check for a VISTA x32 Home Premium config?
???
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Moreover, even on Vista, you must install the Microsoft Speech SDK to get things working.
I also suggest a different method for installing the AT&T voices, which is roughly described in this post:
http://forum.phathack.com/index.php/topic,1037.msg6729.html#msg6729 (http://forum.phathack.com/index.php/topic,1037.msg6729.html#msg6729)
Aarg! I'm at my wits end trying to get voices on my phatbox on Vista. Hopefully someone is still reading here.. I've read and read, installed and uninstalled and uninstalled ad infinitum and always end up with 'speak failed'. The installs have all been basically what is said to do in this thread.
There are perhaps a few clarifications that may help me give a go at another rounds of install. The hacked AT&T installer, I got it from www.brianjonesphotography.com/phat/ATTvoicehack.msi , is it possible this is specific to the version of PMM you are using. I have in general been starting with my original Music Manager 1.87, I copied the contents to the hard disk co I could mary the compatibilit w/XP settings? If so, I suppose the path to follow would be to hack my specific msi when it pops up in the install directory.
There are some later versions of music and media manager at phatnoise.us. If I use the 'full install' versions, will they include the natural voices? Tried the same process with them ending in 'speak failed'.
My last effort was to include the Speech SDK, same result. Is it possible there is some problem with my sound hardware, there are no problems found in device manager and everything seems to be working fine. Even the MS voices yield the speak failed in PMM.
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I believe the workaround hack is based on the usage of the 'latest' versions of the applications. They include the additional voices (or at least do when installed on an XP machine).
If you are struggling, why not switch to some software that is designed for Vista / 7, from http://phathackmm.com ? (Beta version is the most recent / stable)