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Voices
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Balabolka  Voices (Text-To-Speech Engines)The Balabolka application can use the Microsoft Speech API 4.x/5.x voices and the Microsoft Speech Platform text-to-speech engines. The application itself does not contain any voices. The developer of Balabolka is not connected with any of the speech engine manufacturers. SAPI 4 To use SAPI 4 voices, download and install the redistributable Microsoft Speech API file (spchapi.exe, 827 KB). Also, you may download and install the Microsoft Speech Control Panel (928 KB); the Speech Control Panel will add an icon to your Control Panel to enable you to list the compatible text-to-speech engines installed on your system and customize their settings for your use. Free voices from the Lernout & Hauspie company (L&H declared bankruptcy in 2001):
All voices for SAPI 4 became obsolete; they are not recommended for installing anymore.
Use the fresh versions of speech engines. SAPI 5 RHVoice – free and open source speech synthesizer (it supports English, Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Esperanto, Georgian, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese):
UkrVox – free Ukrainian voice created by Yaroslav Kozak (Lviv, Ukraine): Ekho – free TTS engine (it supports Cantonese, Mandarin and Zhaoan Hakka): To get better voice quality, you can purchase commercial TTS engines.
High quality commercial voices:
In Windows 11 the Microsoft Edge browser contains new voices. NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter utility allows to add new speech engines to the SAPI 5 voice list. More information can be found here. Since Balabolka is a 32-bit application, you should install the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the utility (see "Installation Status" in the utility's window). You can download the latest release of the utility. The NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter utility will add voices that require Internet access to work: this is identified by the presence of the word "Online" in the voice name (for example, "Microsoft Conrad Online"). There are also versions of some of these voices that can be installed directly on your computer: these voices will work without network access ("Microsoft Conrad Native", "Microsoft Jenny Native"). Download installers for Microsoft natural voices that work without Internet access:
Microsoft Speech Platform The Microsoft Speech Platform allows developers to build and deploy Text-to-Speech applications. The Microsoft Speech Platform consists of a Runtime, and Runtime Languages (engines for speech recognition and text-to-speech). There are separate Runtime Languages for speech recognition and speech synthesis. The version of the Runtime Languages must match the version of the Speech Platform that you installed. Use the following steps to install the Microsoft Speech Platform (version 11.0):
The Microsoft Speech Platform provides support for 26 languages for speech synthesis. XML tags can be used both for SAPI 5 and the Speech Platform. The SAPI Unifier utility allows to make Microsoft Speech Platform voices available via SAPI 5.
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