I can tell speak on Microsoft's poor implementation of voice addons, but I can tell you how to adjust the speed. Use this control: https://synthiam.com/Tutorials/Help.aspx?id=156

I have speech settings there but speed adjust does nothing - I can also select Giles from speech setting but the Hazel slow voice still outputs. If I could only delete the files Steve G refers to then it may all work - why does Microsoft make everything so difficult!

Tony

Hi Toymaker,

Maybe This thread can help you. You can try going through the control panel to change it. You may have to reinstall a voice engine after last round of updates. If you click on the link on page 6 remove the s after http. Don't know how it got there.

     Ed

I have been doing some research on this - It looks to me now that we are all screwed with the latest updated version of windoze 10!

There looks to be no way to take ownership of the four TrustedInstaller files (for the Zira TTS in my case) so they then cannot be deleated which is required in Steve G tutorial to be able to load another vendors TTS.

So for (up to date) win 10 users ARC are left with a dreadful Zira TTS that talks so slow it sounds drugged and there seems to be no way now of changing the TTS or the speech settings ie speed etc. Our robots will sound like something out of the eighties then we used phonemes and allophones!

Tony

@Toymaker, I had deleted the files that Steve says to in his tutorial and a few months later ended up with slow speaking voice as you seem to have now. I wish I had of documented how I fixed it but I didn't . Going thru this www.ez-robot.com/Community/Forum/Thread?threadId=9028&page=6 post #56, I eventually was given the option to download voices, which I did and then I had all the voices I had before including the abilitiy to change the options in the Control. Hope this helps you out.

DJ, I hate to be a thorn in your side, but there is absolutely something wrong in ARC's implementation of the TTS settings.

Other applications can use all installed voices, including 3rd party voices like Cepstral without issue. Only ARC is stuck on one voice regardless of the selected voice.

Try Roboblather http://zetacentauri.com/software_roboblather.htm to see what I mean. You can select any voice, and modify some of the properties. In ARC, whichever voice I select they all sound the same, although I can change it from male to female and change the speed (which some others can't do, so I think there are some regional differences). They all also sound like an old version of hte voice, not the current much smoother voices used by Cortana and other applications. (note however, Cortana can only use Microsoft voices as far as I can tell. They are better than the one that EZ-Buider is using, but it doesn't see the 3rd party voices).

Alan

Well, I spent all morning and followed up on Bob's lead/advice (and thanks also to MadRocker) and I finally got some decent TTS - basically I have had to change all speech and language to English US from English UK (which is where I am) going through the steps MadRocker linked us to and I then managed to get both William and Giles Cereproc voices working in my cortana pandorabot program and I can also now change the speed. The trouble is that my speech recognition is now US and not UK - but the cortana SR is so good that it is still working around 99%!

Alan, you are right the TTS part of ARC seriously needs to be looked at.

Tony

DJ,

Here is working source code for selecting the installed voices. I was able to compile this in VS2015 Community edition. It had some warning, but worked and I can select any installed voice.

There is also a lot of sample code on MSDN for the various speech manipulation functions under dotnet, but I didn't see downloadable samples and wasn't ready to put in the time to figure out how to write a full sample app.

http://deepak-sharma.net/2013/01/31/text-to-speech-using-c-sharp-in-windows-forms-application/

Alan

@Toymaker,

I wonder if the reason I can't get Cepstral Lawrence to work in Cortana is that it is a UK voice and I am in the US with US settings. I can get it to work in the two apps I listed above.

Alan

Good to hear it worked out for you Toymaker. I was wondering if you were to uninstall then reinstall the UK speech engine would that correct it since 2 engines are now loaded.

@thetechguru I don't have ARC on a 10 machine, but I do use UK hazel with US Settings/ Region on a different machine. Cortana's voice is UK when testing it. Maybe adding the stock UK English engine will get Cepstral Lawrence working.

@Madrocker, I may try that just to experiment. I am not actually as concerned about Cortana as getting it working correctly in ARC. I just found it interesting that Microsoft can't get their own stuff right....

An off topic side comment.... I am very pleased to welcome you to the forum. It is rare for us to get someone who joins, apparently reads all the tutorials and back posts, and starts providing valuable hints and tips so quickly (I see you joined a couple months ago, but your activity seems to be mostly very recent). Your input the past few weeks has been very refreshing.

Alan

@thetechguru, Thank you for the greeting. Lurking in the background and reading has helped me Learn quite a bit, though I still have a ways to go. I do enjoy reading the back posts to help me with that process and use to use them as reference points when I'm unsure. This seems like a great community to me so I felt a lil obligated to try and help if I could. That's what makes good communities great in my mind.

Ed