Text-to-Speech

From Engineered Arts Wiki
Revision as of 12:21, 20 March 2016 by Will (talk | contribs) (Introduction)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Introduction

Text To Speech,(TTS), converts text into sound.
EA integrate third party TTS software to provide this functionality, most recent robots, 2014 onwards use Acapela.

EA have also written software interfaces for:

All of the above TTS solutions are licenced, paid for software supplied by third party vendors, EA robots like RoboThespian and Socibot are normally shipped with at least one voice installed.
The default voice is the Acapela English male character Graham.

Please specify any other voices you would like installed when ordering your robot, additional voices can also be installed remotely a later date. There is a licence fee payable for each voice installed.

There are some free to use TTS solutions available like Festival these can be integrated by the customer if required but are not supported by EA.


Languages

TTS supports many different languages, and speakers, male, female, children, and characters.
There are also controls to vary the speed and tone of voices.

You test many of the Acapela voices on their website


As of Spring 2016 there are 34 Acapela Languages available:

  • Arabic
  • Catalan
  • Chinese Mandarin
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch (Belgium)
  • Dutch (Netherlands)
  • English (Australia)
  • English (India)
  • English (UK)
  • English (US)
  • Finnish
  • French
  • French (Belgium)
  • French (Canada)
  • German
  • Greek
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Spanish (North America)
  • Swedish
  • Swedish (Finland)
  • Turkish

Installed Versus Virtual Robot TTS Voices