Configuring Text to Speech

Only the Trial and Enterprise versions of VoiceGuide can do Text to Speech (TTS). The Personal and Professional versions of VoiceGuide cannot do TTS. 

Before using the VoiceGuide TTS features, Microsoft SAPI will need to be installed on your system.

The SAPI engine can be downloaded from:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/speechSDK/SDK/5.1/WXP/EN-US/speechsdk51.exe

Please refer to Microsoft's installation guide on installing the SAPI engine on your system. SAPI expects a sound card to be installed on the system. Please ensure a sound card is installed on the system and its drivers configured prior to installing Microsoft SAPI. SAPI does require that a Sound card is present in the system in order to operate properly.

To test if the SAPI installation completed correctly use the TTSApp demo program:

Start -> Programs -> Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1 -> Tools -> TTSApp

Then select the TTS engine and press the "Save to .wav" button. If the .WAV file was created and you can play it back using a sound file player then the SAPI installation has completed successfully.

Microsoft SAPI installs a few basic demonstration TTS engines as part its install. The quality of voice produced by the Microsoft TTS engines is very poor. To obtain better quality sound 3rd party TTS engines need to be purchased.

Please see VoiceGuide Downloads WWW page for a listing of alternative TTS engines, and contact sales@voiceguide.com to discuss which TTS engine would best suit your requirements.

After the 3rd party TTS Engines are installed you must select which TTS engine you would like to be used by VoiceGuide.

VoiceGuide v7

The default TTS voice is set in VG.INI, section [SAPI], field TTSEngine. eg:

[SAPI]
TTSEngine=Cepstral David-8kHz

VoiceGuide v5 / v6

Default TTS voice can be set using the Speech applet from the Windows Control Panel:

If the Speech applet show above cannot be seen in the Control Panel then it can be found in this location:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Speech\sapi.cpl

We have received reports that selecting the default TTS engine using the Control Panel's Speech applet does not work on some systems. In these situations we'd recommend moving to VoiceGuide v7. VoiceGuide v7 sets the TTS engine internally (as can be seen in the previous section of this help file page)