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.
edited to remove long post about partial success. it was only temporary....
@thetechguru,
Did you check to make sure the language was still gone from the hard drive? You know as well as I do that Microsoft likes to try to protect you from yourself a lot.
OK. Now I have partial success. If I install Cepstral and then reboot, and then delete the en-US engine, Lawrence works in windows and ARC. Can't use any of the voice effects like Old Robot, and no other voices work in EZ, but Lawrence does. (even though Hazel does in Windows).
Same results on both 32 and 64 bit machines (although using the trial Cepstral license on 64 bit)
Alan
Partial success is much further than we have made it up to this point. I wish there was an overall solution to it but partial is better than nothing. Maybe Windows 10 will have better luck but I am not holding my breath.
@Alan.
When I opened C:\Windows\Speech\Engines\TTS\en-GB, I deleted the four files I had one by one.
M2057HAZ.Keyboard.NUS M2057HAZ MSTTSLocENGB.dat M2057HAZ.APM
Technically Hazel (the four files above) isn't out looking for a new job just yet, but she has been banished and resides in the recycle bin at the moment. To get the Cepstral effects working on ARC....
Open your (c: ) drive,
Then Program files,
Cepstral,
Sfx,
Copy the effect you want to use,
Go back to cepstral,
Voices,
Open "Lawrence" file,
Paste the sfx file,
Rename the effect to "default.sfx",
And that should be it. Open ARC and Lawrence should use the effect. Hope that helps Alan.
Awesome Steve.
So Microsoft has really borked up Sapi, but at least we have workarounds.
Alan
That worked great (copying the effect file). I'll probably wind up using dizzy droid or pvc pipe so that our K9's will sound like cousins instead of twins. I'll write a little batch file to make it easier to switch until I make up my mind.
Alan
No worries Alan. Pleased you got it sorted. I use the PVC pipe effect with my little fella. He's just happy he can talk again (& so am I).