I really appreciate your input so far Richard and Alan, but it just ain't happening. So here's what I've tried so far...

Tried all three installed Microsoft voices,

Installed and tried Cepstral,

Installed and tried Ivona,

Un and Re-installed ARC three times now,

Used UK, United States, and Canadian Regonal settings,

Tried every speech synthesis setting configuration for each voice,

Disabled anti virus (just in case),

Set different voices to default in the laptops TTS settings (applied and and saved),

Restarted laptop several times after doing all the above,

And now I'm fresh out of ideas.

All voices work outside of ARC, but only Hazel UK (with English accent) works with ARC with every setting variation that can be done. I'm really hoping someone from EZ Robot HQ might have some suggestions. stress

OK, so on UK version of Windows, only Hazel UK works for you. On a North America version of Windows only David really works (Richard R, if you set David to Female in ARC, it will be the same voice as Zira is in Windows....).

It appears that at least for Richard, Cereproc (which is different from Cepstral) works in ARC, so I guess it will be up to EZ-Robot to figure out how it interacts differently from the others, but I think this is clearly an EZ-robot issue to fix.

Not sure if you want to drop 25 pounds on a Cereproc voice just to see if it works. They do seem to have some decent UK accent voices. I think I'll wait for an ARC fix before spending anything. Microsoft David works well enough for my current needs. If I get my K9 built before it is fixed, I'll reconsider.

Alan

@Alan.

Not sure I want to fork out £25 to test another voice out just yet. I think I'll wait to hear from the EZ Robot guys first to hear their take on things, and find out whether its a bug that needs to be looked at or if there's another solution to solve this.

@DJ and Jeremie.

So what do you guys think could be causing these voice issues, and have you come across something like this before?

@Steve G I have exactly the same Voice problem as you - I'm stuck with just one voice on 4 different Windows installations - Win7-64 on a PC, Win7-32 on an old Dell, Win8-64 on a PC and Win 8.1-64 on a tablet. In all cases I can change the voice within Windows but ARC does not allow any change. ARC "Speech Settings" displays the available Windows voices (which varies for my 4 installations) but will not change to any of the listed voices. As with yours, the only thing that can be changed is the rate. Yes, my Hazel has a "pommie" accent too! I have not tried any 3rd party voices.

@Tony.

Thanks for posting and letting us know, and sorry to hear your suffering from the same problem too. Strange your having problems with Windows 7 installations as I've never had a problem with that. But saying that, it's also strange that's it not working with windows 8 as well. It's not nice to hear your having these issues, on two Win 8 systems no less, but I'm glad I'm not the only one. So maybe the is a bug of some sort. confused

@Steve G I must clarify that my Windows7 only has one voice - Anna, whereas Windows8 comes with David, Hazel & Zira, Windows 8.1 comes with Heera instead of David. In all cases though Gender, Age and Emphasis cannot be adjusted in the ARC Speech Settings panel. In 8 & 8.1 the voice can't be changed between the 3 available voices. Yes, they can be "changed" in the panel but they all sound the same!

If I was confident that a 3rd party voice would work in Win8 or preferably my 8.1 tablet I'd pay for and use that option. Having only the one fixed voice makes for a pretty boring robot in the speech department, and I feel like my JD needs to be wearing a skirt!

@Tony.

I feel you buddy. My K-9 robot was using Cepstral Lawrence with robot effect on Win 7 which has become a big part of his personality, and the move to Win 8 with ARC has pretty much killed that off for the time being, along with my new robo project that was going to use the Ivona voice I chose for it.

Using a female voice (and not a great one at that) is not what I want for either robot. I'm still hoping to hear from someone at EZ HQ in regards to this as I really want, and need to get this issue solved as I'm sure you do too.

Okay, so this morning I tried another 3rd party voice which was a free one from NVDA. It's a screen reader but comes with a selection of free to use voice synthesisers which I have used successfully on Win 7 64 bit and worked with ARC. With Win 8 64 bit, NO JOY AGAIN.

As before, it shows up in the speech synthesis settings list, tried different variations of settings, but ARC still uses MS Hazel.

This is getting desperate now as my Win 7 laptop has almost given up working, and I have a charity event at a school I'm supposed to be taking K-9 too this Saturday, as having him conversing with the kids there was meant to be one of the attractions. I can't take him with a poor sounding female voice as it ruins the effect, besides, I have sound files that include Cepstral Lawrence which would mean he would be speaking with two voices.

I'm really at a loss of things to try now. confused stress