Resolved by CochranRobotics!
Hey guys.
I have asked this question in another thread, but I decided to create a new "assistance required" thread as my issue relates to Windows 8, where as the other thread was really related to Windows 7, plus I'm still having problems. I really hope someone can help with this.
The issue
I'm in the middle of a transition from moving from a Win 7 to Win 8 laptop, and I'm having a real pain in the butt issue using speech synthesis voices with the new Windows 8 machine and new ARC install.
As Richard may remember, I mentioned in the other thread that I copied the .exe file for a Cepstral voice from my Win 7 machine, reinstalled it on to the Win 8 laptop, and added the activation key. The voice worked on Narrator and other 3rd party apps such as screen readers, but it never worked on ARC so I thought that was the problem. I have since reset the laptop back to the "Out of the box" state, and started again.
My new Windows 8 Toshiba Satellite laptop comes with three pre-installed voices, but only one of them works with ARC. I have installed a fresh version of a trial Cepstral voice and a 30 day trial of an Ivona voice, and neither one works with ARC either.
I have tried each and every variation of the "Speech synthesis" settings for each voice and they have made no difference whatsoever, and keeps using the one Windows voice. The only thing that does change is the "Rate".
Have any of you guy's faced this issue with Windows 8, and/or does anyone know what can be done so I can use the voices I want to use? I really want to get this working and I don't see why I'm having these problems, as using Cepstral with ARC on Windows 7 was no problem at all. Please help. confused
Many thanks.
Steve.
@David.
Tell me about it. I've looked myself. Beleive me I've looked a lot.
I bought and downloaded the CereProc Adam voice and installed it. I then went to the control panel and went to Speech Recognition. I choose the Text To Speech from the left side, and then choose the Text to Speech tab. I set CeneVoice Adam - English (East Coast America) as the voice selection and clicked OK.
I launched ARC and now all speech from ARC uses this voice no matter which voice is selected in the speech settings dialog. This voice is now at the top of my list. I think the default windows voice is first in the list in ARC.
While this isnt a total fix to the issue, it might offer you a solution to how to get a voice other than the default windows voices. It looks like the first voice in the dropdown is being used. I suspect that the first voices I downloaded and installed have messed up the VoiceChanged property of the speech synthesis DLL based on this information.
That is interesting. That is exactly what I have tried with Cereproc voice (even tried again just now) and it doesn't work for me. stress
Does this voice appear at the top of the list in ARC? Also, did you try a new project in ARC or is this one that was already in existence? I am just curious.
one more thing... I uninstalled the first voice that I had tried prior to installing the second voice. That may be a difference.
@David.
When I selected Cereproc as default Windows voice, it did appear at the top of the speech synthesis settings list. And it is a new project I'm trying it with. I will delete the other two voices and see what happens.
Ok, so I just un-installed Cepstral and Ivona, restarted the laptop and tried again. I set the TTS default voice to Cereproc and opened a new project. Went through all the setting variations... still no change. It still insists on using MS Hazel.
How do I go about deleting Microsoft Hazel from my laptop? I want to try this to see what happens with the other two MS voices and Cereproc when I try using them in ARC.