SAPI5 TTS Voices?

[norberto]

Hi,

i'm under the impression that the number of freely available TTS voices
under SAPI5 is extremely limited as opposed to the number of freely
available voices under SAPI4.

Is this correct or are there a lot of freely available TTS voices under
SAPI5 as well? And if so, where can i get them, please?

Thanks again.

norberto

[k***@nextup.com]

The only free sapi5 voices are Mary, Mike, and Sam as far as I know.
We sell a number of sapi5 voices at
http://nextup.com/TextAloud/SpeechEngine/voices.html

[norberto]

Thanks for the info. i looked at the website and tested the voices.
They all basically sound the same and are not very interesting. Some of
the voices in SAPI4, for example, were different, for example the
Robosoft voices and Brutus which can add a novelty voice to a product,
whereas the rest of the SAPI5 voices are virtually indistinguishable
from each other, are dry and extremely bland, except for the Cepstral
"Robin" female child voice, which i'm thinking of getting.

Can you tell me if the Cepstral voices allow pitch and rate control?

Also, does anyone else know of other voices for SAPI5 which are more
"interesting"?

Thanks again.

[j***@cepstral.com]

Norberto,

Check out the Damien and Duchess voices at Cepstral. They're quite
interesting.

http://www.cepstral.com/demos/

Also, note that Cepstral voices come with several SpeechFX files that
drastically alter the sound of the voices. SFX can be applied
permanantly to a voice by copying the files into the voice directory as
a file named "default.sfx". You can design your own SpeechFX files
free of charge, too, at http://www.cepstral.com/sfx/

Disclaimer: I'm a developer at Cepstral.

[norberto]

Thank you for the info. i'll definitely check it out.

An observation i have, after looking at many different speech engines /
voices on the web from various vendors, is that there really isn't much
choice out there since most base line voices all sound basically the
same, with the only real differences being in speech quality (ie: some
sound a heck of a lot more robotic / mechanical than others). But i'm
surprised there aren't a lot more "off baseline" or fundamentally
different sounding voices out there.

For example, a long while back, one of the voice vendors had a "valley
girl" voice, as well as a VERY cute small child's voice as well as a
Scottish-accented voice which were very different from the stale "TV
news anchor" type voices that are the current offerings, which are all
extremely boring, no matter which language they're offered in.

If there were any such interesting voices, i'd use them in a minute as
would, i'm sure, many other developers, because the type of voice can
really make a product very interesting. Varying the pitch, rate, etc.
of the "TV news anchor" type voices doesn't produce very interesting
results.

Perhaps a vendor out there will take up the challenge and produce the
interesting voices and make them available to developers at a
*reasonable* cost? As a side note to speech engine / voice vendors:
most developers of speech-enabled products are not gigantic
deep-pockets corporations and so are very limited in what they can
outlay initially in purchasing a voice engine / voice for development.
Vendors may want to consider a licensing strategy based on reasonable
royalties per unit of product sold, rather than trying to get it all up
front and thus shutting themselves out of many potential products and
markets.

Thanks again.