{"id":20975,"date":"2023-02-09T18:20:36","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T18:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/?p=20975"},"modified":"2023-02-10T11:11:30","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T11:11:30","slug":"two-excellent-tts-voices-now-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/2023\/02\/09\/two-excellent-tts-voices-now-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Two excellent TTS voices, now free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Excellent clear British SAPI5 TTS voices for short animations and tutorials are <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/IvonaVoice1.6Amy22kHz\">Ivona Voice 1.6 Amy 22kHz<\/a> (aka Ivona 2 Amy). The other is the less common <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/voiceware-bridget-british-english-16khz\">Neospeech Voiceware Bridget<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UE8Nxr7M3oI\">demo<\/a>). Yes, they&#8217;re still robo voices, but I&#8217;d say they&#8217;re the most pleasing and human of the female British voices released in the 2010s for SAPI5. And you can&#8217;t argue with free and offline. No subscriptions or data-gouging needed (though Eleven Labs are the best, if you want that). Both voices are now free on Archive.org, and work with the free <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cross-plus-a.com\/balabolka.htm\">Balabolka<\/a>. Here&#8217;s how to control them with some simple markup.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> Amy can be controlled using the normal SAPI markup (SSML) in the Balabolka editor. She also supports phenomes (visimes) symbols, a prosidy markup tag, and others.<\/p>\n<pre><phoneme alphabet=\"ipa\" ph=\"\u027a\u02a1\u029c\u0291\u02a2\"\/><\/pre>\n<pre><prosody rate=\"-20%\" volume=\"40\">prosidy<\/prosody><\/pre>\n<pre>You say, <sub alias=\"tu-mah-toe\">tomato<\/sub>. \r\nI say, <sub alias=\"to-may-toe\">tomato<\/sub>.<\/pre>\n<p><strong>2.<\/strong> Neospeech Voiceware Bridget however does not support phenomes, prosidy etc and requires the following XML tags to add pauses and emphasis&#8230;<\/p>\n<pre>Here we insert a very slight pause.\r\n\r\nHere <silence msec=\"01\"\/> we insert <silence msec=\"01\"\/> a <silence msec=\"03\"\/> <emph>very<emph> slight <silence msec=\"03\"\/> pause?!<\/pre>\n<p>Add <strong>!<\/strong> or <strong>?!<\/strong> to inflect and emote a word at the end of a sentence&#8230;<\/p>\n<pre>gosh!<\/pre>\n<pre>gosh?!<\/pre>\n<p>Also working as XML tags with Bridget&#8230;<\/p>\n<pre><emph>emphasis<\/emph><\/pre>\n<pre><volume level=\"50\">quieter voice<\/volume><\/pre>\n<pre><rate absspeed=\"-6\">slower speed<\/rate><\/pre>\n<pre><pitch absmiddle=\"6\">higher pitch<\/pitch><\/pre>\n<p>No closing tag is needed for the following milliseconds pause tag&#8230;<\/p>\n<pre> <silence msec=\"300\"\/> <\/pre>\n<p>Incidentally, Neospeech Voiceware Bridget shows up in Balbolka as &#8220;VW Bridget English (United States)&#8221;, when she should be &#8220;VW Bridget English (British, upper class)&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Excellent clear British SAPI5 TTS voices for short animations and tutorials are Ivona Voice 1.6 Amy 22kHz (aka Ivona 2 Amy). The other is the less common Neospeech Voiceware Bridget (demo). Yes, they&#8217;re still robo voices, but I&#8217;d say they&#8217;re the most pleasing and human of the female British voices released in the 2010s for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-companion-software","category-freebies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20975"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20991,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20975\/revisions\/20991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}