Natural Sounding Voices

[Gary Beene]

Now that I have written a variety of apps that use SAPI to read text, I'd like to move past the built-in Microsoft voices to something more "natural".

Has anyone found a TTS products that allow you use the capability from within your PBWin app?

On the web I can see dozens of TTS apps but filtering through the marketing content to figure out which ones are compatible with PBWin is going to take days of effort. So if anyone has some experience to shorten the learning curve, I'd like to hear from you.

[Michael Mattias]

to figure out which ones are compatible with PBWin

If they are standard 32-bit Windows, they are compatible. Period.

That said, many vendors may "assume" developers are in 64-bit land.

PB's "cleanliness" with regard to allowing access to the WinAPI, one of the reasons I originally selected PB as my "tool of choice" for Windows ( in the previous century!) still looks like a good reason.

[Pierre Bellisle]

Hey Gary,

If I follow you right, you want some new voices.
You do not want voice engines that may require change to your current code.
So, you may add TTS voices to Windows, then from your PB program you select the Windows voice you want.
Google "install windows TTS voice"

Are we on the same wavelength ?

[Gary Beene]

Howdy, Pierre!

Thanks for the comment but I'm not looking so much for new voices as I am voices that sound more natural than SAPI gives me with Windows. And if it requires a change to code I've used before, then I'm willing to do that to get a more natural sounding voice.


Howdy, MCM!

I wasn't referring to the voices, so much as the apps on the market that give a more natural sound. I can see lots of stand-alone apps that deliver natural sounding voices and a few of those talk about API. I'm still looking to see which of those PBWin might be able to use.

I'll post any examples I can code that gives the results I'd like to see.

[Steve Hutchesson]

Gary, the kindest I can say about SAPI is that they are terrible robotic horrors. I have picked up a number of very good apps found on Facebook where the voice quality is very hard to pick from a human voice. You have to learn how to edit them as far as the text you feed the software and with a bit of practice, how each voice works with different types of words but high quality results can be obtained if you need them.

This short video I did for a neighbor who lost his mousetrap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArSxRREcnEU

[Stuart McLachlan]

Thanks for the comment but I'm not looking so much for new voices as I am voices that sound more natural than SAPI gives me with Windows. And if it requires a change to code I've used before, then I'm willing to do that to get a more natural sounding voice..

So to clarify, you are looking for a TTS engine that you can program with PB which has good voices?

[Gary Beene]

Howdy, Steve!
Yep, robotic is the descriptor.

Howdy, Stuart!
Sort of ... but I don't think of "good voices" as being the same as "natural sounding voices"

[Steve Hutchesson]

Gary, decent TTS voices are usually output as MP3, to get the size down, use the freeware LAME for audio compression. I have had reasonable results at 16k and 32k with LAME settings.

[Kurt Kuzba]

If they are standard 32-bit Windows, they are compatible. Period.

That said, many vendors may "assume" developers are in 64-bit land.

PB's "cleanliness" with regard to allowing access to the WinAPI, one of the reasons I originally selected PB as my "tool of choice" for Windows ( in the previous century!) still looks like a good reason.

Sure. He knows that.
He wants to know if there is a more natural sounding voice for which there exists PB code at this time.
Utilizing the experience of others, if there is any for this application, will cut development time.

[Michael Mattias]

Sure. He knows that.

Knowing it is one thing. Effectively communicating it is another.

Follow the rest of the thread for more than sufficient examples.

to clarify, you are looking for a TTS engine that you can program with PB which has good voices?

and

Sort of ... but I don't think of "good voices" as being the same as "natural sounding voices"

What we have he-yah is a fail-yuh to cum-moon-icate.

However...
You know who has REALLY "good" and/or "natural sounding" artificial voices? The <expletive> robocallers!