Added README

README

+Sonic is a simple algorithm for speeding up or slowing down speech.  However,
+it's optimized for speed ups of over 2X, unlike previous algorithms for changing
+speech rate.  The Sonic library is a very simple ANSI C library that is designed
+to easily be integrated into streaming voice applications, like TTS back ends.
+
+The primary motivation behind Sonic is to enable the blind and visually impaired
+to improve their productivity with open source speech engines, like espeak.
+Espeak currently suffers from poor performance when speeding up by a small factor
+of 2.6X, it does not currently have the ability to increase beyond this rate.
+With Sonic, espeak sounds more natural, and can be sped up much more.
+
+Sonic can also be used by the sighted.  For example, Sonic can improve the
+experience of listening to an audio book on an Android phone.
+
+Sonic is Copyright 2010, Bill Cox, all rights reserverd.  It is released as open
+source under teh GPL license version 2.
+
+Author: Bill Cox
+email: waywardgeek@gmail.com

samples/README

+These wav files show how Sonic performs at increasing speech rates.
+
+talking.wav
+This is my father talking, using a decent microphone and 44KHz sample rate.
+
+talking_2x.wav
+This is his voice sped up by 2X using Sonic.
+
+espeak_s450.wav
+Sonic also performs well at increasing the speed of synthesized speech.
+espeak_s450.wav was generated using 'espeak -s450 -f test1.txt -w
+espeak_s450.wav'.  This is the highest speed currently supported by espeak,
+though Sonic can speed up espeak to much faster rates.
+
+espeak_sonic.wav
+This was generated with 'espeak -f test1.txt -w out.wav;
+sonic 2.6 out.wav espeak_sonic.wav'.  Sonic sped it up 2.6X, which is about the
+same speed as espeak at -s450.  I personally feel that the sonic sped up sample
+sounds better than espeak at -s450.
+
+voxin_s110.wav
+This was generated with 'say -s110 -f test1.txt -w voxin_s110.wav'.  It's about
+3.1X faster than voxin's default rate.
+
+voxin_sonic.wav
+This was generated with 'say -f test1.txt -w out.wav; sonic 3.1 out.wav
+voxin_sonic.wav'.  It sounds almost identical to voxin_s110.wav, as far as I can
+tell, though one blind listener says he prefers the sound of voxin when sped up
+using sonic.

samples/test1.txt

+You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.  That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.  There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.