It’s that time of year. The wonderful time of year when we gather with friends and family, eat too much food, exchange some presents, have some fun and occasionally consume drinks with a larger than normal proportion of egg in them.

At NeoSpeech, we’re passionate about learning and linguistics, so we’ve gathered our team and put together a guide to saying “Merry Christmas” in 5 different languages – English, Spanish, French, Chinese and Japanese. To help us out, we’ve asked our top quality text-to-speech voices to pronounce Merry Christmas in each of the languages so you can really impress your friends, colleagues or barista with your perfect pronunciation.

For us, learning a new language is one of the best uses of text-to-speech technology, so let’s get into the holiday spirit and learn something new!

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English – Merry Christmas

A Bit of Culture

Christmas is celebrated widely throughout the English speaking world. It is a major holiday in large countries, such as the USA and the UK, as well as in smaller countries like New Zealand. Of course, Christmas is celebrated by Christians, but it is also widely celebrated by non-religious people who view the holiday as a nice reason to gather with the people they love. Families often put up a Christmas tree and decorate it with lights and hanging decorations and have a large family meal. Presents are then placed under the tree and opened on Christmas Day.

How to Pronounce Merry Christmas

This one is easy – if you’re reading this blog post, you can probably pronounce Merry Christmas just fine. But have you heard it in a British accent? How about an American one?

Listen to Hugh’s smooth British English voice wish you a Merry Christmas or let one of our most popular American English voices, Julie, show you how it is done on this side of the world.

Hugh – UK English

Julie – US English

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Mexican Spanish – Feliz Navidad

A Bit of Culture

In Mexico, Christmas is celebrated for almost a whole month from December 12^th to January 6^th. Nativity scenes, knows as ‘nacimiento’ are very popular in Mexico. Sometimes the figures in the nativity scene are life size and a whole room in the house will be dedicated to the nacimiento. Christmas trees are not as common in Mexico as in the USA and the UK, with the nacimeineto being much more popular. Christmas is celebrated on the 25^th of December, but Mexicans also widely celebrate El Dia de los Reyes (The Day of the Kings) where the 3 kings leave presents or candy on the 6^th of January.

How to Pronounce Feliz Navidad

While it is useful to see the phrase written on this page, we’re going to get Francisco, our male Mexican Spanish voice to pronounce the phrase out loud so you can hear exactly how to say it (and impress your friends and family).

Francisco – Mexican Spanish

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Canadian French – Joyeux Noël

A Bit of Culture

Canada is a large country, the 2^nd largest in the world in fact, which makes it a melting pot of people from different cultures and countries. Because of this, there are many different ways in which Christmas is celebrated. Most families put up a Christmas tree, which is usually a fir or pine tree because the province of Nova Scotia is known world-wide for its pine and fir Christmas trees. Many Canadians open their presents on Christmas Eve and send Christmas cards to their friends and family. The Santa Claus Parade in Toronto is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the world, having started in 1913.

How to Pronounce Joyeux Noël

If you’ve never spoken in French before, the phrase Joyeux Noël could look at little daunting. Even if you took French in high school, it may be a long time since you’ve spoken in French. So, we’ve asked Chloe, our female Canadian French synthesized voice, to pronounce the phrase for us.

Chloe – Canadian French

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Mandarin Chinese –圣诞节快乐 (Shèng dàn jié kuài lè)

A Bit of Culture

In China, only 2-4% of people are Christians so the majority of the population knows very little about the religious side of Christmas. This means that Christmas is primarily celebrated in major cities, where Christmas has been quite commercialized as it is in many other countries. In these cities, there are large Christmas Trees and stores are decorated with festive lights and decorations. Here, Santa Claus is referred to as ‘Shen Dan Lao Red’, which means Old Christmas Man. Most people only see a Christmas tree in shopping malls and very few people will have one in their homes.

How to Pronounce Shèng dàn jié kuài lè

Technically, the phrase Shèng dàn jié kuài lè translates to Christmas Happy, but it is the phrase used to say Merry Christmas in China. If you’re a native English speaker, this might be a hard one to pronounce, so sit back and listen to Liang, one of our male Chinese synthesized voices, say this festive phrase.

Liang – Mandarin Chinese

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Japanese –メリークリスマス(Merīkurisumasu) 

A Bit of Culture

Like China, there are very few Christians in Japan meaning that Christmas is not widely seen as a religious holiday. Christmas is not a national holiday in Japan, meaning that businesses and schools are still open. Christmas has only recently become a celebrated event in the last few decades and is seen as a time to spread happiness rather than celebrate a religion. The Japanese people have recently starting taking on more USA and UK based traditions, such as the sending and receiving of gifts at Christmas time. Christmas Eve is viewed as a romantic day, where young couples exchanges gifts and go out for dinner; the day is similarly viewed in Japan as Valentine’s Day is in the USA. In terms of Christmas food, fried Chicken is the popular food of choice, with Christmas being the busiest time of year for local KFC restaurants.

How to Pronounce Merīkurisumasu

Like Mandarin Chinese, the Japanese phrase for Merry Christmas, Merīkurisumasu, can be rather hard to pronounce if English is your first language. Here is a clip of one of NeoSpeech’s female Japanese voices, Misaki, spelling out the phrase so you can bring a new element of culture to Christmas this year.

Misaki – Japanese

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How Do You Say Merry Christmas?

How do you celebrate Christmas? Did our text-to-speech voices help you learn something new? Let us know in the comments below or email us at marketing@neospeech.com.

Learn More about NeoSpeech Text-to-Speech

NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech technology is useful for all kinds of learning, including learning a new language as we did today or taking an e-learning course online. We have a full range of text-to-speech solutions with 30 voices and 7 languages, which you can find out more about by viewing our products page.

Alternatively, if you have any questions or you’d like to talk to someone about adding text-to-speech to your next product or e-learning platform, please fill out our Sales Inquiry form and one of our friendly sales team members will be happy to help. Or, if you’d like to learn more about Christmas traditions around the world, take a look this great resource, Why Christmas.

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Merry Christmas from the team at NeoSpeech!

We’re proud to announce two new additions to our ever-growing list of voices, including our first ever male Canadian-French voice! Leo and Beth are now fully available in all of our product offerings, giving users and developers more customization in their text-to-speech applications.

Leo, our first male French-Canadian voice, and Beth, our latest US English voice, raise the standards for high-quality speech synthesizers. We don’t like to brag often, but these are both outstanding voices.

Who is Leo?

Leo perfectly captures the allure of the French-Canadian accent. His voice strikes the delicate balance between a deep yet elegant tone. Leo’s voice has been described as friendly and professional, making his voice perfect for business use. Make Leo’s voice the first thing your customer hears when they call your company and they’ll be instantly hooked.

In addition to using Leo for IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) purposes, his smooth and realistic voice makes him ideal for announcement systems, broadcasting, eReading, and personal use.

Now, we wouldn’t just talk up Leo’s voice this much without backing it up. Listen to Leo’s voice yourself and see what our excitement is about! You can also put Leo to work in the demo section of our home page by selecting his voice and typing any text you wish for him to speak!

You can also read our press release on Leo HERE!

Who is Beth?

Beth is our fourth female, and sixth overall US English voice! This gives our customers a wide range of variety in selecting just the right English voice for their applications.

What makes Beth so special is the attracting and warming tone of her voice. These traits are often missing from synthesized speech, but Beth’s voice has the undeniable ability to connect with her audience.

This personal connection that Beth achieves makes her voice ideal for education, language learning, screen reading, health monitors, medical devices, and of course, personal use.

Again, we wouldn’t throw all of these claims at you without proving it. You can listen to Beth’s voice yourself and allow her to read any text you type by selecting her voice on the demo section of our home page.

How do these voices sound so realistic?

Ever heard the phrase “slow and steady wins the race”? Well, that’s the approach we take when developing our speech engines. As we discussed in our blog post “HTS VS. USS: WHICH SPEECH SYNTHESIS TECHNIQUE IS BETTER,” we use the USS technique which takes much more time, but as of today producers the best quality voice.

It takes us about a full year of hard work from start to finish to create a new voice using this technique, but the superior quality of our voices definitely makes the effort worth it to us! And we think you’ll agree when you experience our text-to-speech technology.

Can we expect more voices soon?

You bet! We’re expanding our line by adding new languages. Plus, we’re also adding voices to languages we already support to give you more customization. We’re working tirelessly to continue to be the leading provider of text-to-speech technology, and we can’t wait to introduce you to our new voices, or better yet, to have our new voices introduce themselves to you!

What do you think?

Did you listen to Leo’s or Beth’s voice? What do you think of them? What sort of technologies or applications would you like to hear these voices in? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

To learn more about the different areas in which Text-to-Speech technology can be used, visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And to learn more about the products we offer, visit our Text-to-Speech Products page.

If you’re interested in adding Text-to-Speech software to your application or would like to learn more about TTS, please fill out our Sales Inquiry form and one of our friendly team members will be happy to help.

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If you’re an app developer, chances are you cheered for joy upon reading that title. If you’re not an app developer, then you probably have no idea what this means. However, there’s still reason for you to celebrate as well. Optimizing our VoiceText embedded SDK for Bitcode support is great news for both developers and Apple product users.

So What Is Bitcode?

Apple unveiled Bitcode at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June of last year. It was announced that Bitcode would “allow the App Store to re-optimize apps for each kind of device before they’re delivered to the user”. Apps would also automatically accommodate for updates released by Apple.

In short, Bitcode is able to optimize an application to be used by the intended device. To give you an idea, the Facebook app on an iPhone is not entirely the same as the Facebook app on an iPad. Since these are different devices, the app needs different resources to be able to run on each particular device, so the executable architecture of the app is different.

In the days before Bitcode, if a developer wanted their app to be compatible with all Apple devices, then they would have to make sure that their app contained all of the resources needed to run on each device. Then, whenever an end-user downloads the app, it would contain the executable architecture for their device and every other device, making the file size of the app much larger.

With Bitcode, the iTunes store can automatically optimize an app for a specific device. When the app gets downloaded, it’s only downloaded with the executable architecture for that particular device.

Why This Is Good For Developers

This is good for developers because with Bitcode, all they have to do now is upload a full version of their app to iTunes. Then, the iTunes store will do the rest of the work and create a version of the app that is compatible for one particular device, such as the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

Another time-saving benefit of Bitcode is that whenever Apple releases an update, iTunes will automatically update the app too. Before, if Apple released a new update of the iPhone, then a developer would need to reconfigure their app so it would still work properly. Now this will be done automatically by iTunes.

Why Is This Good For End-Users

There’s two reasons why you should be happy here. First, because the app you download will only have the executable architecture for your device, it means the size of the app will be smaller. Apps with Bitcode will require less of your precious memory to store. This also means that it will download faster.

The second reason why you should be happy is that apps with Bitcode will automatically update with each Apple update. No longer will end-users have to worry about their apps becoming out of date and incompatible with their device.

What Kind Of Apps Would Use NeoSpeech, Anyway?

Glad you asked. Several apps use NeoSpeech today. Popular uses include screen reading, eLearning, navigation, and alerts. Developers have been using NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech technology to create breakthrough apps that make information more accessible to all, especially users who are visually impaired. We wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already heard our voices on your Apple device.

You can also check out some apps that we’ve released ourselves. Our Spokesperson app lets you type in messages that become converted to speech with our voices! You can save messages and quickly tap them to have it read aloud.

Our Newspeak app reads out news stories to you, so you can keep up with current events without having to strain your eyes by reading on a tiny screen. This app can be especially useful for when you’re driving and wanting to listen to the news!

What do you think?

Do you use any apps that have text-to-speech features? Are there any apps out there that you think should have text-to-speech? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

To learn more about the different areas in which Text-to-Speech technology can be used, visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And to learn more about the products we offer, visit our Text-to-Speech Products page.

If you’re interested in adding Text-to-Speech software to your application or would like to learn more about TTS, please fill out our Sales Inquiry form and one of our friendly team members will be happy to help.

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We’re excited to announce yet another new release. Yafang, a female Taiwanese voice, is now available to purchase for personal or commercial use. This comes after the release of Beth, a US English female voice, and Leo, our first Canadian-French male voice last month.

Yafang is our first Taiwanese voice. Adding Taiwanese gives customers more opportunity to reach new audiences with NeoSpeech. Other languages include English (US and UK), Mexican Spanish, Canadian-French, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

A proper introduction is in order, so how about we let Yafang introduce herself! Click HERE to listen for yourself what a high quality Taiwanese text-to-speech voice should sound like.

About Taiwanese Mandarin

Yafang speaks Taiwanese Mandarin. This is considered a dialect of standard Mandarin spoken in mainland China. It is the official language of Taiwan.

However, it wasn’t always that way. From 1890 to 1945 during the Japanese colonial occupation, Japanese was the official language of Taiwan and was taught in schools. At the conclusion of World War II in 1945, the Republic of China took control of Taiwan from Japan and introduced Mandarin as the official language.

At this point, schools were required to teach mandarin in schools. However, the influences of Japanese as well as other popular languages in Taiwan such as Taiwanese Hokkien made the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan have noticeable differences to the Mandarin spoken in China. This includes differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.

Most of the Taiwan’s population of 23 million people can speak Taiwanese Mandarin fluently.

About Yafang

Yafang is one of our most natural sounding text-to-speech voices to date. She can handle any text, long or short, and convert it into a high quality sound file. Her speech flows perfectly together.

This makes Yafang perfect for any commercial purposes. If you’re running a call center using IVR/CTI technology and you expect Taiwanese callers, then you should definitely consider integrating Yafang into your system. Yafang can also be used for audio publishing, broadcasting, eLearning, training videos, and navigation systems, among several other uses!

About NeoSpeech Voices

NeoSpeech offers over 30 voices in 7 different languages. What separates NeoSpeech from other text-to-speech providers is the quality of our voices. We strive to produce high quality, natural sounding text-to-speech voices.

Yafang, as well as our other voices, was created using the Unit Selection Synthesis (USS) method. As of today, this method produces the most natural sounding synthesized speech. We use a least 20 hours of recorded audio to make these voices to ensure they produce the correct sounds each time they’re talking.

You can read more about how we create our voices in USS vs HTS, Which Speech Synthesis Technique Is Better?

What do you think?

Did you listen to Yafang’s introduction? What did you think of her voice? What other languages would you like us to produce? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

To learn more about the different areas in which Text-to-Speech technology can be used, visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And to learn more about the products we offer, visit our Text-to-Speech Products page.

If you’re interested in adding Text-to-Speech software to your application or would like to learn more about TTS, please fill out our Sales Inquiry form and one of our friendly team members will be happy to help.

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Be the first to hear our Thai and Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices!

That’s right, we have not one, but two new languages coming out soon, and starting today you can download our desktop demo engines for these new voices. We have a male and female voice for each of our two upcoming new languages: Brazilian Portuguese and Thai.

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese will be the first South American language NeoSpeech offers. It is spoken by more than 204 million people around the world, and by virtually all of Brazil’s 200 million inhabitants. Brazil is the largest country in South America, and the 5^th largest in the world in terms of population.

Brazil also has a booming economy and a total GDP over 3 trillion dollars, which is the 7^th biggest economy in the world.

Our Brazilian Portuguese voices are Rafael (male) and Helena (female). You can listen to samples of their voices below:

Rafael

Helena

Thai

Thai, which is also known as Central Thai, or Siamese, is the national language of Thailand. Thai is estimated to have over 20 million native speakers, and more than double that speak Thai as a second language.

Unsurprisingly, Thai is mostly spoken in Thailand. Thailand is the 20^th most populous country in the world with 66 million inhabitants. Thailand is also the 20^th biggest economy in the world by nominal GDP.

Fun fact, spoken Thai is mutually intelligible with Laotian, the official language of Laos! Laotian is spoken by around 25 million people.  The two languages are linguistically similar, but written in different scripts.

Our Thai voices are Sarawut (male) and Somsi (female). You can listen to samples of their voices below:

Sarawut

Somsi

Demo Engine

As we said earlier, the desktop demo engines are now available for each voice! Our demo engines are for Windows operating systems. Check the minimum system requirements below to see if you can run the demo engine:

Operating System – Windows Vista, 7 & 8

CPU – Pentium III 500 MHz

RAM – 256 MB

Disk Space – about 200 MB per voice

(Demo engines only offer 16 khz frequency)

How to get a demo engine

If you’re an existing customer of NeoSpeech, you can download our demo engine free of charge. It’s as simple as getting in contact with your account manager. Just let them know which voices you’re interested in and they’ll send you the engines you need.

When’s the full release?

Don’t worry, we’re not going to make you wait long. Expect to see an announcement in the coming weeks!

What do you think?

Did you listen to the Brazilian Portuguese and Thai text-to-speech samples above? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post Demo of Brazilian Portuguese and Thai text-to-speech engines out now appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

In case you didn’t see the news, last week we announced the release of our first Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices! We now offer two Brazilian Portuguese voices, one male and one female.

Rafael is our male Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voice. He has a smooth and deep voice that speaks clearly. His realistic voice will bring life to any device or application that features it.

Helena is our female Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voice. Her pleasant voice would be a wonderful addition to any speech enabled application or device.

Listen to Rafael’s voice               Listen to Helena’s voice

At NeoSpeech, we pride ourselves on Rafael’s and Helena’s high quality voices. We strive to make our text-to-speech voices as natural-sounding as possible. After months of hard work, we feel we have achieved that with Rafael and Helena.

The reason we work so hard on having realistic text-to-speech voices is because we want end-users to feel like they’re communicating with another human, as opposed to a robot, when interacting with devices or applications that feature our voices. This improves end-user satisfaction and ensures that they will be able to clearly understand everything that is being said to them.

If you’re interested in using our Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices for your commercial product or for personal use, contact our Sales Team and we’ll help you out!

Contact Sales Team!

You can read the full press release on the announcement of our new Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices here.

Be on the lookout for the announcement of the release of the interactive Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech demo on our website where you can type any text you wish and listen to either Rafael or Helena recite it.

What do you think?

Have you listened to the new voices? Plan on using them for your product? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post NeoSpeech now offers Brazilian Portuguese Text-to-Speech voices appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Did you see the news? We recently announced the release of our first two Thai text-to-speech voices! Sarawut (male) and Somsi (female) speak incredibly beautiful and natural-sounding Thai and are available now.

If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu, that might be because this release came just two weeks after the release of our first two Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices! These new releases mean that NeoSpeech now offers over 40 unique voices in 11 different languages.

Our male Thai text-to-speech voice, Sarawut, speaks clearly in a smooth sounding voice. Somsi, the female Thai text-to-speech voice, has a very pleasant and personable tone to it. Both voices are able to convert any length of text into speech instantly. You can use both voices for professional applications such as call center solutions, announcement systems, and training courses, or for consumer applications like intelligent virtual assistants, mobile apps, eLearning courses, and accessibility devices.

Listen to a sample of Sarawut and Somsi for yourself to hear how realistic our Thai text-to-speech voices sound:

Sarawut                     Somsi

Our range of products makes it simple for you to painlessly integrate Sarawut and Somsi into any type of application. We optimize our text-to-speech engines for desktop, server, and embedded-based solutions. You can also access Sarawut and Somsi through our TTS Cloud Service and host your application on our cloud!

If you’re interested in using our Thai text-to-speech voices, or any of our other voices, contact our sales team so we can send you everything you need to build your speech enabled device or application.

Yes I’m interested in the Thai text-to-speech voices!

Soon, you’ll be able to test Sarawut and Somsi for yourself in the interactive demo on our website. We’ll be sure to announce it as soon as it is released!

You can read the full press release on the announcement of our Thai text-to-speech voices here.

What do you think?

Have you listened to the new Thai voices? Do you have any questions about using them for business or personal use? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post NeoSpeech releases Thai text-to-speech voices appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Be the first to sample our German, Italian, French, and Spanish text-to-speech voices!

Get ready to listen to our first ever European language text-to-speech voices! Starting today, existing NeoSpeech customers can contact our team to get their free download of any of the 8 new voices we’ll be releasing soon.

We have 4 new languages, and each one has a male and female option. Here’s a little preview of each voice!

German

Tim          Lena

Hallo! Tim is our male German text-to-speech voice and Lena is our female German text-to-speech voice. Click the buttons above to hear their voices!

Italian

Roberto          Elisa

Ciao! Meet Roberto, our male Italian text-to-speech voice and Elisa, our female Italian text-to-speech voice.

French

Louis          Roxane

Bonjour! Allow us to introduce you to Louis, our male French text-to-speech voice, and Roxane, our female French text-to-speech voice.

Spanish

Manuel          Lola

Hola! Click the buttons above to hear sample clips of Manuel, our male Spanish text-to-speech voice and Lola, our female Spanish text-to-speech voice.

What is the demo engine?

The demo engine is a 32-bit desktop application that lets you type in any text you wish and listen to it be converted into speech. You can download the demo application for any of the 8 voices listed above onto your computer.

Keep in mind that our demo engine only offers a 16 kHz frequency (the same as the voice samples above). The full-release versions of these voices will offer much higher frequencies, which will mean higher quality sounding voices.

Here are the system requirements for each demo engine:

Operating System – Any Windows OS

CPU – Pentium III 500 MHz

RAM – 256 MB

Disk Space – about 200 MB per voice

How do I download the demo engine?

If you’re an existing customer of NeoSpeech, just get in contact with us and let us know which voice or voices you’re interested in! Then we’ll send you the application so you can download it onto your computer.

How much does each demo engine cost?

Nothing. Nada. Zero. You can sample our upcoming German, Italian, French, and Spanish text-to-speech voices for free!

When will these voices be available for purchase?

We won’t make you wait too long. Be on the lookout for the announcements of each release! They’re coming soon!

What do you think?

Did you listen to any of our new text-to-speech voices above? Which one was your favorite? Which one are you most looking forward to using? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post European Text-to-Speech Demo Engines Available Now appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Starting today, you can control our new Thai and Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices with our interactive web demo.

The demo, which is located on the home page of neospeech.com, allows you to select any of our 40+ voices in 11 different languages and type in any text you wish to hear get spoken by them. Our web demo will instantly convert your text into beautiful, natural sounding speech.

Our two new Thai text-to-speech voices are Sarawut (male) and Somsi (female). Sarawut has a clean, smooth voice while Somsi sounds very personable and pleasant.

Our new Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices are Rafael (male) and Helena (female). Both sound very natural and incredibly realistic.

Listen to these new voices speak anything you wish for them to say now!

What can I use these voices for?

Glad you asked, there’s a wide and ever-growing range of applications that text-to-speech can be used for. Our new voices, or any of our voices for that matter, are perfect for both professional and consumer-based applications.

You can integrate any of our voices into your call center solution, eLearning program, mobile app, or stand-alone product. You can also just use our text-to-speech engines to generate voices files and sound prompts.

I like what I heard and want to purchase one or more of these voices! How do I do that?

Easy, just get in touch with our Sales Team and they’ll be happy to get you everything you need. And if you want to do some research on some of our packages, check out our Products Page and TTS Cloud Service Page.

And if you’re interested in using our text-to-speech voices for commercial use, definitely download a free copy of our eBook, “Which Text-to-Speech Product Is Right For You?” to help you decide which NeoSpeech solution you need.

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The post Try our Thai and Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices on our website now! appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Did you know that Microsoft Word has a built-in text-to-speech function?  This TTS function, which is called the Speak function, allows you to highlight words and have them read out loud to you with the default voice that Microsoft has set up. 

Microsoft has one or two default voices that come along with your computer. But did you know that you don’t have to stick with Microsoft’s bland voices? Instead, you can install any of our natural sounding NeoSpeech SAPI voices onto your computer to use in Microsoft Word!

In this blog we will teach you how to:

1. Enable the Speak function in Microsoft Word
2. Install the NeoSpeech SAPI voices
3. Enable the NeoSpeech SAPI voices as the default voice on your Windows computer.

Before we begin please note that these instructions are for Windows operating systems only and are only for Microsoft Word versions 2010 or later.   

Section 1: Enable the Speak function in Microsoft Word

Step 1: Open up your Microsoft Word program and go to the top task bar menu. Click the drop down arrow on the right hand side of the task bar.

Step 2: After opening the drop down menu click on the “More Commands” option.

Step 3: Then, under the “Choose commands from” menu,  click on “All Commands”.

Step 4: From “All Commands” scroll down till you reach the Speak option click Add and then OK.

Step 5: This will enable the Speak function on your task bar.

Now you should be able to use the Microsoft Speak function on your Word program. Just highlight any words that you want spoken and click the Speak button.

Section 2: Install the NeoSpeech SAPI voices

NeoSpeech SAPI voices will work with any Microsoft Office suite program. Purchasing our NeoSpeech SAPI voices is as simple as filling out a Sales Inquiry form and letting us know which voices you want. Our Sales Team will then send you the download files and instructions on how to install NeoSpeech’s SAPI text-to-speech voices onto your Windows computer.

I want NeoSpeech’s SAPI voices!

If you already have our SAPI voices installed, you can move on to Section 3. If not, you will need to install our SAPI voices first before you can move on.

Section 3: Applying NeoSpeech SAPI voice as the default voice for your Windows computer.

To make sure the Speak function in Microsoft Word uses your new NeoSpeech text-to-speech voice, you need to set it as the default voice for your computer. Here is how you can do that:

Step 1:  Open Windows Control Panel and type “text to speech” in the search menu. Under the Speech Recognition section, click “Change text to speech settings”.

Step 2: From the “Voice selection” menu choose the NeoSpeech SAPI voice you have installed. Click Apply and then OK.  Now, anytime you use a Microsoft program with the Speak function active it will use the NeoSpeech SAPI voice that you have set as the default voice.  Note: All NeoSpeech SAPI voices have VW followed by the name of the voice you purchased.

There you have it, you can now use text-to-speech in Microsoft Word with NeoSpeech’s voices.

But wait, there’s more! The Speak function is available on all Microsoft Office applications as well! So that means you will be able to use text to-speech on your Excel and PowerPoint documents as well. Just make sure you are using a 2010 or later version of the Microsoft Office.

To enable the Speak function on these other Microsoft Office applications, just open the programs and follow the steps in Section 1. And yes, if you set one of NeoSpeech’s voices as your computer’s default voice, it’ll work in those programs as well.

What do you think?

Was this helpful? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

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The post Learn how to enable NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech voices in Microsoft Word appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Ready to build a stand-alone text-to-speech product or application? Here’s everything you need to know.

This blog is part 1 of a 7-part blog series highlighting each of NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech solutions

If you’re building a custom text-to-speech application, or you want to give your product a voice, then you’ve come to the right place.

At NeoSpeech, we have a variety of solutions that can make that happen. Our product packages were optimized to make it easy for you to integrate our text-to-speech voices into your product. Plus, you can be assured that you’ll have the most natural sounding text-to-speech voices that your customers will love.

Here are all of NeoSpeech’s Solutions:

• VoiceText TTS Engine SDK
• VoiceText TTS Server SDK
• VoiceText Embedded SDK
• VoiceText Editor (VT Editor)
• VoiceText SAPI
• Web Service (cloud-based solution)
• TTS On Demand (cloud-based solution)

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For this blog, we’ll focus on NeoSpeech’s VoiceText TTS Engine SDK. The purpose of this blog (and the rest in this series) is to explain in more detail the purpose of each of our products, who they’re for, and what you can expect if you purchase them.

The VoiceText TTS Engine SDK is for developers wanting to build custom speech-enabled applications. That could mean an announcement system, a screen reader, or just an application for creating voice files.

So what exactly comes with this product package? And how does that work? Keep on reading to find all the answers and see if this is the right solution for you.

What is it?

This product, broken down into simplified terms, is really two things. First, there’s the text-to-speech engine. Second, there’s the SDK package. Let’s define what each one is.

Text-to-Speech engine

This is our core technology. The engine is what is able to convert text into audible speech. The engine contains a database of all the broken-down and tagged units of speech from the original voice actor. When the TTS engine receives text, it analyzes it to understand the meaning of the text, then it pulls the necessary pieces of speech from the database and puts them together to generate the speech output.

You can read more about how our text-to-speech engines work here.

SDK package

This stands for software development kit. This is a set of tools that allow you or your developer to integrate our text-to-speech engine into your custom product or application. These tools that we send you make the process of incorporating our technology into your own application much easier.

You can purchase just the VoiceText TTS Engine or you can purchase it with the SDK package. We recommend getting the SDK package if you are building a custom application.

Who is this solution for?

The VoiceText TTS Engine SDK is for building stand-alone applications on Windows and Linux operating systems. We can also customize our TTS engine to port it to another operating system if that is what you need.

(If your solution uses an embedded operating system, then you want our VoiceText Embedded SDK. If you’re using a server to host your TTS engine, get our VoiceText TTS Server SDK)

The key word here is “stand-alone”. This means that the application doesn’t have to connect to the internet or to another device/application to work. It works on its own.

To have a stand-alone TTS application, the text-to-speech engine must be stored within the application itself, or at least on the same computer that the application is running on.

So let’s say you’re building an application to create voice prompts for an announcement system. In this scenario, you just need one text-to-speech application to create and save the voice files. You would download our TTS engine and SDK packages, build your program, and then use it to make the voice files.

But what if your customers need to make their own voice prompts? Or their text-to-speech needs to be dynamic because their announcement systems will always say something different? In this case, you would need to include the full TTS engine in the announcement system application that you send to your customers so that they can have the ability to make their own voice prompts on the spot.

No matter how you do it, the most important thing to know about the VoiceText TTS Engine is you’re your custom application must be able to access the TTS engine locally.

If you’d rather store the TTS engine on a server that your end-users and customers would access to receive speech, then you need to look into our VoiceText TTS Server and Web Service products.

One of the pros of choosing the VoiceText TTS Engine over our sever-based solutions is that you’ll have the text-to-speech engine saved within your custom application, making it easier to access. A con could be that a TTS engine takes up a lot of memory, which would give your custom application a larger footprint.

Make sure to read about all of our products and solutions to make sure you find the best one for you. Or, you could always just get in touch with our friendly sales team and they’ll help you out.

How does NeoSpeech optimize it for my needs?

We don’t sell cookie-cutter versions of our product. Each package is customized to fit our customer’s needs.

As we just mentioned, there are a couple operating systems that our engine can run on. We can also custom port our engine if it runs on an operating system that we currently don’t support.

 We also let you choose which sampling rate you want your audio in. Anything from 8 kHz, 16 kHz, 22kHz, and 44kHz. The higher the sampling rate, the higher the voice quality will be.

On the flip side of that, the higher the sampling rate, the higher the footprint will be too. Our packages can be anywhere between 3 MB to 1.5 GB.

You’ll have to choose which sampling rate and footprint size are best for you based on your needs. Is having a small footprint or higher voice quality more important? It depends on your application.

Finally, we have dozens of different voices and languages to choose from!

How does it work?

Here’s everything you need to know about how to purchase, install, and use our TTS engine and SDK.

Purchasing process

To purchase our VoiceText TTS Engine SDK, you have to get in touch with us through our Sales Inquiry form. Once we receive your inquiry, one of our sales team members will get in touch with you and discuss the details of your project.

We do this so we can understand everything about your business and your product. This allows us to make sure we optimize the TTS engine to your specifications.

Installation

Once you have purchased our VoiceText TTS Engine SDK, we’ll send you the download files for both the TTS engine and the SDK package.

Once you have downloaded both files, our engine and SDK package should be stored on your computer. Here is what the file folder would look like for the TTS engine and SDK package:

The example above is for Julie’s (US English) engine and SDK package for a Windows operating system. The “bin”, “data-common”, and “data-julie” folders are part of the TTS engine. The “docs”, “include”, “lib”, and “samples” folders are part of the SDK package.

We’ll go into what each folder contains later.

Verification

In same email, we’ll also send you the license key, or CD key, along with a set of instructions on how to use the license key to verify your text-to-speech engine.

Basically, you just need to use the license key to get a verification file that you’ll then save in one of your TTS engine file folders. This will verify your copy of our software and give you full access to our TTS engine!

Integration

At this point, you should have the text-to-speech engine ready and all the SDK tools you need, so it’s time to start building and integrating!

Here’s an overview of what files come with the VoiceText TTS Engine SDK so you’ll know what to do with them:

• bin – If you’re on a Windows operating system, this file contains a couple applications you can operate. The first will be a VT Editor of the voice you purchased so you can use it and test the voice yourself. The other is a dictionary application that lets you modify and change the way certain words or phrases are pronounced.
• data-common – This folder holds the dictionary file. This is an excel document that contains all the changes and special rules you’ve put in place. You can put as many different dictionaries in this folder as you want! This folder also contains the license folder which we’ll explain more later.
• data-(name) – This folder is the database. This is essentially where the text-to-speech voice lives.
• docs – Here you’ll find the SDK user manual. This manual will teach you everything you need to know about how to use our TTS engine and how to integrate it with your custom application.
• include –This folder has the header library source file.
• lib – This folder has the second library source file.
• samples – In here you’ll find some sample script to see how the SDK is used.

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When integrating, all you need to do is import both library source files (header and lib) into your application, and then write code that tells your program where the database file is located so it can be accessed. From there you just need to write the code that’ll tell your application when and how to use the TTS engine! Simple as that.

Hopefully this brief overview of our VoiceText TTS Engine SDK gave you a better idea of what you can expect with this solution and if it’s for you. Keep in mind that whenever you purchase a solution from NeoSpeech we’ll send you all the detailed manuals you’d need to build your product or application.

If you believe that this product is for you, or if you have any questions, get in contact with our sales team now!

I’m interested in the VoiceText TTS Engine SDK!

Feel free to ask us any questions about the VoiceText TTS Engine SDK in the comments below and we’ll be sure to answer them. And be on the lookout for the rest of the articles in this series!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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In case you didn’t see the news last week, NeoSpeech announced the official release of 8 natural sounding text-to-speech voices in 4 brand new languages.

If you’re keeping count, this means that NeoSpeech now offers 48 voices in 15 unique languages!

Here is a list of the newly released languages and voices, which you can purchase now:

  Italian text-to-speech (Roberto and Elisa)

  Spanish text-to-speech (Manuel and Lola)

  French text-to-speech (Louis and Roxane)

  German text-to-speech (Tim and Lena)

Like with all NeoSpeech voices, each of our new voices speak clearly and in a natural voice. You can read more about our European language release here!

About NeoSpeech’s new text-to-speech voices

Where can I demo NeoSpeech’s new voices?

You can test out any of NeoSpeech’s voices in the demo section of our website. At the top of the NeoSpeech home page, you can select any voice you wish to hear from and listen to their welcome message. You can also type in any text you wish and listen to them say exactly what you want to hear.

What can I do with NeoSpeech’s new voices?

You can use our new European text-to-speech voices to bring your product to life.

We develop and package our text-to-speech engines with SDKs, APIs, and other tools and resources so you can integrate them into your speech-enabled product or application.

Today, there’s a wide range of applications that text-to-speech can be used for. Any of our voices, including our new European ones, can be used in assistive devices, call center solutions, embedded apps and devices, cloud-based solutions, eLearning software, and hundreds of other applications.

You can learn more about NeoSpeech’s packages on our Products page and TTS Cloud Service page. You can also download our free eBook titled “Which Text-to-Speech Product is Right for You?”

How do I purchase these voices?

Once you’ve decided which voice(s) and product you want (or if you need us to help you figure that out), you can contact our sales team who’ll answer all of you questions and send you everything you need.

What do you think?

Have you tried out our new text-to-speech voices yet? What did you think about them? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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Here at NeoSpeech, we like to point out that we have the most natural sounding text-to-speech voices on the market. Our synthesized voices can produce speech that sound as realistic as an actual human voice.

But don’t take our word for it, listen to what the reviewers of NewsSpeak have to say.

NewSpeak, an iOS and Android app by NeoSpeech, uses our text-to-speech technology to read news articles out loud to you. Originally released in 2014, NewsSpeak is still very popular and has garnered high praises from reviewers.

What is NewsSpeak?

Smart phones and tablets have made reading the news more convenient. With them, you can easily find articles and read about stories you’re interested in.

NewsSpeak takes that convenience and raises it to the next level by reading the news stories out loud to you with NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech voices! With NewsSpeak, you can listen to all the news stories you’re interested in, without having to read them on your smart phone or tablet screen.

NewsSpeak comes equipped with seven NeoSpeech voices. Users can choose their voice of preference and also select the news categories that they’re interested in. NewsSpeak will then keep the user up to date with the latest news from their preferred categories.

Users can even create playlists of news articles and save them for later. NewsSpeak is great for listening to the news stories while driving, working, doing chores, and just about anything else!

What do the reviewers have to say?

The reviews are in, and our users agree on two things. First, that NewsSpeak is a wonderful, and convenient, app. Second, that NeoSpeech has the best text-to-speech voices in the world.

Here’s what reviews had to say about NewsSpeak:

by seanarama  ★★★★★

Great clear voice reading with multiple accents. Easy interface.

by haotang1976 ★★★★★

Great app. Now I could be updated on the current news while getting ready for work.

by DailyCommuterSF  ★★★★

Just downloaded the app and I am very impressed! The voice quality (being a NeoSpeech voice) is very good. App functions very well…

by MinhDao Pham ★★★★★

Works great for me!

by Ben Metzger ★★★★★

Wow Amazing app! Puts news articles into a playlist and reads them for you. Cool set of voices…

by thefeet ★★★★★

Great tts engine. Very clear and the smoothest flow i’ve heard from ANY tts voice…

How do I get NewsSpeak?

You can download NewsSpeak for free from iTunes or the Google Play store! And yes, you read that correctly, the app is free to use!

What do you think?

Have you download NewsSpeak yet? When do you use it to listen to the news? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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Be the first to hear our Thai and Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices!

That’s right, we have not one, but two new languages coming out soon, and starting today you can download our desktop demo engines for these new voices. We have a male and female voice for each of our two upcoming new languages: Brazilian Portuguese and Thai.

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese will be the first South American language NeoSpeech offers. It is spoken by more than 204 million people around the world, and by virtually all of Brazil’s 200 million inhabitants. Brazil is the largest country in South America, and the 5^th largest in the world in terms of population.

Brazil also has a booming economy and a total GDP over 3 trillion dollars, which is the 7^th biggest economy in the world.

Our Brazilian Portuguese voices are Rafael (male) and Helena (female). You can listen to samples of their voices below:

Rafael

Helena

Thai

Thai, which is also known as Central Thai, or Siamese, is the national language of Thailand. Thai is estimated to have over 20 million native speakers, and more than double that speak Thai as a second language.

Unsurprisingly, Thai is mostly spoken in Thailand. Thailand is the 20^th most populous country in the world with 66 million inhabitants. Thailand is also the 20^th biggest economy in the world by nominal GDP.

Fun fact, spoken Thai is mutually intelligible with Laotian, the official language of Laos! Laotian is spoken by around 25 million people.  The two languages are linguistically similar, but written in different scripts.

Our Thai voices are Sarawut (male) and Somsi (female). You can listen to samples of their voices below:

Sarawut

Somsi

Demo Engine

As we said earlier, the desktop demo engines are now available for each voice! Our demo engines are for Windows operating systems. Check the minimum system requirements below to see if you can run the demo engine:

Operating System – Windows Vista, 7 & 8

CPU – Pentium III 500 MHz

RAM – 256 MB

Disk Space – about 200 MB per voice

(Demo engines only offer 16 khz frequency)

How to get a demo engine

If you’re an existing customer of NeoSpeech, you can download our demo engine free of charge. It’s as simple as getting in contact with your account manager. Just let them know which voices you’re interested in and they’ll send you the engines you need.

When’s the full release?

Don’t worry, we’re not going to make you wait long. Expect to see an announcement in the coming weeks!

What do you think?

Did you listen to the Brazilian Portuguese and Thai text-to-speech samples above? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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In case you didn’t see the news, last week we announced the release of our first Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices! We now offer two Brazilian Portuguese voices, one male and one female.

Rafael is our male Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voice. He has a smooth and deep voice that speaks clearly. His realistic voice will bring life to any device or application that features it.

Helena is our female Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voice. Her pleasant voice would be a wonderful addition to any speech enabled application or device.

Listen to Rafael’s voice               Listen to Helena’s voice

At NeoSpeech, we pride ourselves on Rafael’s and Helena’s high quality voices. We strive to make our text-to-speech voices as natural-sounding as possible. After months of hard work, we feel we have achieved that with Rafael and Helena.

The reason we work so hard on having realistic text-to-speech voices is because we want end-users to feel like they’re communicating with another human, as opposed to a robot, when interacting with devices or applications that feature our voices. This improves end-user satisfaction and ensures that they will be able to clearly understand everything that is being said to them.

If you’re interested in using our Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices for your commercial product or for personal use, contact our Sales Team and we’ll help you out!

Contact Sales Team!

You can read the full press release on the announcement of our new Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices here.

Be on the lookout for the announcement of the release of the interactive Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech demo on our website where you can type any text you wish and listen to either Rafael or Helena recite it.

What do you think?

Have you listened to the new voices? Plan on using them for your product? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post NeoSpeech now offers Brazilian Portuguese Text-to-Speech voices appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Did you see the news? We recently announced the release of our first two Thai text-to-speech voices! Sarawut (male) and Somsi (female) speak incredibly beautiful and natural-sounding Thai and are available now.

If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu, that might be because this release came just two weeks after the release of our first two Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices! These new releases mean that NeoSpeech now offers over 40 unique voices in 11 different languages.

Our male Thai text-to-speech voice, Sarawut, speaks clearly in a smooth sounding voice. Somsi, the female Thai text-to-speech voice, has a very pleasant and personable tone to it. Both voices are able to convert any length of text into speech instantly. You can use both voices for professional applications such as call center solutions, announcement systems, and training courses, or for consumer applications like intelligent virtual assistants, mobile apps, eLearning courses, and accessibility devices.

Listen to a sample of Sarawut and Somsi for yourself to hear how realistic our Thai text-to-speech voices sound:

Sarawut                     Somsi

Our range of products makes it simple for you to painlessly integrate Sarawut and Somsi into any type of application. We optimize our text-to-speech engines for desktop, server, and embedded-based solutions. You can also access Sarawut and Somsi through our TTS Cloud Service and host your application on our cloud!

If you’re interested in using our Thai text-to-speech voices, or any of our other voices, contact our sales team so we can send you everything you need to build your speech enabled device or application.

Yes I’m interested in the Thai text-to-speech voices!

Soon, you’ll be able to test Sarawut and Somsi for yourself in the interactive demo on our website. We’ll be sure to announce it as soon as it is released!

You can read the full press release on the announcement of our Thai text-to-speech voices here.

What do you think?

Have you listened to the new Thai voices? Do you have any questions about using them for business or personal use? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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Be the first to sample our German, Italian, French, and Spanish text-to-speech voices!

Get ready to listen to our first ever European language text-to-speech voices! Starting today, existing NeoSpeech customers can contact our team to get their free download of any of the 8 new voices we’ll be releasing soon.

We have 4 new languages, and each one has a male and female option. Here’s a little preview of each voice!

German

Tim          Lena

Hallo! Tim is our male German text-to-speech voice and Lena is our female German text-to-speech voice. Click the buttons above to hear their voices!

Italian

Roberto          Elisa

Ciao! Meet Roberto, our male Italian text-to-speech voice and Elisa, our female Italian text-to-speech voice.

French

Louis          Roxane

Bonjour! Allow us to introduce you to Louis, our male French text-to-speech voice, and Roxane, our female French text-to-speech voice.

Spanish

Manuel          Lola

Hola! Click the buttons above to hear sample clips of Manuel, our male Spanish text-to-speech voice and Lola, our female Spanish text-to-speech voice.

What is the demo engine?

The demo engine is a 32-bit desktop application that lets you type in any text you wish and listen to it be converted into speech. You can download the demo application for any of the 8 voices listed above onto your computer.

Keep in mind that our demo engine only offers a 16 kHz frequency (the same as the voice samples above). The full-release versions of these voices will offer much higher frequencies, which will mean higher quality sounding voices.

Here are the system requirements for each demo engine:

Operating System – Any Windows OS

CPU – Pentium III 500 MHz

RAM – 256 MB

Disk Space – about 200 MB per voice

How do I download the demo engine?

If you’re an existing customer of NeoSpeech, just get in contact with us and let us know which voice or voices you’re interested in! Then we’ll send you the application so you can download it onto your computer.

How much does each demo engine cost?

Nothing. Nada. Zero. You can sample our upcoming German, Italian, French, and Spanish text-to-speech voices for free!

When will these voices be available for purchase?

We won’t make you wait too long. Be on the lookout for the announcements of each release! They’re coming soon!

What do you think?

Did you listen to any of our new text-to-speech voices above? Which one was your favorite? Which one are you most looking forward to using? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post European Text-to-Speech Demo Engines Available Now appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Starting today, you can control our new Thai and Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices with our interactive web demo.

The demo, which is located on the home page of neospeech.com, allows you to select any of our 40+ voices in 11 different languages and type in any text you wish to hear get spoken by them. Our web demo will instantly convert your text into beautiful, natural sounding speech.

Our two new Thai text-to-speech voices are Sarawut (male) and Somsi (female). Sarawut has a clean, smooth voice while Somsi sounds very personable and pleasant.

Our new Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices are Rafael (male) and Helena (female). Both sound very natural and incredibly realistic.

Listen to these new voices speak anything you wish for them to say now!

What can I use these voices for?

Glad you asked, there’s a wide and ever-growing range of applications that text-to-speech can be used for. Our new voices, or any of our voices for that matter, are perfect for both professional and consumer-based applications.

You can integrate any of our voices into your call center solution, eLearning program, mobile app, or stand-alone product. You can also just use our text-to-speech engines to generate voices files and sound prompts.

I like what I heard and want to purchase one or more of these voices! How do I do that?

Easy, just get in touch with our Sales Team and they’ll be happy to get you everything you need. And if you want to do some research on some of our packages, check out our Products Page and TTS Cloud Service Page.

And if you’re interested in using our text-to-speech voices for commercial use, definitely download a free copy of our eBook, “Which Text-to-Speech Product Is Right For You?” to help you decide which NeoSpeech solution you need.

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The post Try our Thai and Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech voices on our website now! appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Want to build a speech-enabled application that can service multiple requests at once from anywhere in the world?

This blog is part 2 in a 7-part blog series highlighting each of NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech solutions.

Building your own text-to-speech solution or integrating text-to-speech into your existing product shouldn’t be difficult.

With NeoSpeech, it’s actually pretty easy. We send you the complete TTS engine optimized to your specifications with the specific SDKs and APIs you need so you can integrate it into your custom product or application.

Which NeoSpeech product you need to make that happen depends on what you’re trying to build and how you need to use text-to-speech. Here are all of NeoSpeech’s solutions:

• VoiceText TTS Engine SDK
• VoiceText TTS Server SDK
• VoiceText Embedded SDK
• VoiceText Editor (VT Editor)
• VoiceText SAPI
• Web Service (cloud-based solution)
• TTS On Demand (cloud-based solution)

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In this blog, we’re focusing on our VoiceText TTS Server SDK. The key word here is “server”. By hosting your TTS engine on your own server, multiple end-users can access your TTS engine at anytime from anywhere. This NeoSpeech product is popular with IVR/CTI call center solutions, transportation solutions such as navigation apps, and dozens of other types of applications.

Let’s go over everything about our VoiceText TTS Server SDK, who it is for, how it works, and how we can optimize it to fit your needs.

What is it?

Included in this product package are our text-to-speech engine and a server SDK. Here’s what each of those are:

Text-to-Speech engine

If you read the first blog in this series, then you already know what our TTS engine is. Our TTS engine is our core technology that is able to convert text into speech. The TTS engine contains a database of all the speech recordings from the original voice actor. When the engine receives a text input, it analyzes the text and then generates the speech output.

Server SDK

The Software Development Kit (SDK) is what will enable your custom application to communicate with the TTS server. An SDK is defined as a set of tools that allows you to integrate NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech technology into your own product. The SDK is what will allow your devices to send text-to-speech requests and receive synthesized audio from the TTS server.

Who is this solution for?

In the previous blog post in this series, we talked about how the TTS Engine SDK was for those wanting to build stand-alone applications. On the flip side, our TTS Server SDK is for those wanting to build server-based applications.

A stand-alone application works on its own. The TTS engine is located within the application and is able to make the text-to-speech conversions locally.

A server-based text-to-speech application means that the TTS engine is located within a server that can then connect to multiple end-users. The end-user devices/applications send TTS requests to the server (through a network connection) and then the server sends back the TTS conversion to the end-user.

Let’s look at a common example of a server-based text-to-speech application: navigation apps. These are apps on your smart phone, or within your car, which give you directions to your desired destination. These apps often feature text-to-speech features so users can listen to directions while keeping their eyes on the road.

If you’re making this type of application, you can host your TTS engine on your own server. Everyone who downloads your navigation app onto their smart phone is an end-user. Then, whenever an end-user is using your app and the application needs to give a direction such as, “Turn left onto First Street”, it will send a request to the server. The server will convert the text into a speech file, and then send that file back to the end-user application, which will then play the speech out loud.

If you were instead making stand-alone TTS navigation app, then the TTS engine will be located within the app and each end-user will have to download the TTS engine with the app onto their smart phone.

Call centers and IVR systems frequently host TTS engines within a server as well. Multiple phone lines can be connected to the server, which will send out the appropriate text-to-speech commands to each phone line as it receives a call.

There are a few reasons why you may prefer to host your TTS engine on your server as opposed to making a stand-alone product.

First off, TTS engines require a lot of storage space. If you want a high-quality, natural sounding text-to-speech voice reading out directions for your navigation app, then it might not be feasible to have the TTS engine located within the app since it’ll make the memory required to store the app on a smart phone too large for many end-users to handle.

Also, by hosting the TTS engine in your server, you have complete control over it. You can control all changes/updates to it, monitor its usage, and even edit the customizable dictionary that allows you to determine how certain words or phrases are pronounced.

If our VoiceText TTS Server SDK sounds like the solution you need then keep reading! If you’re still unsure about which one is right for you, you can get in contact with our sales team or read our free eBook on the matter!

How does NeoSpeech optimize it for my needs?

There are several ways we can customize the server SDK product package so it can fit your needs.

To start, our server engine can run on Windows and Linux operating systems, we’ll make sure to send you the correct version you need.

We also make sure to customize our engine to make sure the audio output is at your desired sampling rate. Typically, we do 8 kHz, 16kHz, and 44 kHz. Higher sampling rates will have higher voice qualities. 8 kHz is usually the best bet for IVR systems and emergency notifications.

In addition to the TTS engine that we send you, we’ll also send you the SDK that’ll enable you to establish communication between the TTS engine in your server and your end-users. Our SDKs support all major programming languages, including C, Java, COM, and .NET.

Our TTS engine can also be run on servers using the MRCP v1 and v2 protocols. MRCP is a commonly used communication protocol for speech servers. Our TTS server engine and SDK can interact with all kinds of MRCP applications.

Finally, we also set up your TTS engine to have the desired amount of ports you need. Think of a port as a gateway between your server and your end-users. If your TTS engine on your server has 8 ports, then it can handle up to 8 text-to-speech requests at once.

You’ll want to make sure that you have enough ports to support the amount of TTS requests you expect to receive at any given moment. If your TTS server does not have enough ports to handle all the requests it receives, then it will not be able to fulfill all the requests.

How does it work?

Now that you know everything about our VoiceText TTS Server SDK package, let’s go over everything you need to do to get your TTS server up and running.

Purchasing Process

Once you’ve decided that you want to purchase our TTS Server SDK, you just need to submit a Sales Inquiry form to our friendly sales team. One of our team members will promptly reach out to you and discuss all the details about what you need so we can customize the package to meet your requirements.

Installation

After you make your purchase, we’ll send you the download files for the TTS engine and the SDK package you need.

You’ll need to install the TTS engine and server SDK package onto your server. Here’s a look at the server directory that’ll be installed if you’re using a Windows server:

We know, that’s a lot of folders. The User Guide that we’ll send you will explain what each of them contains. For now, all you need to know are the “document” and “server-api” folders, which we’ll explain in the Integration section.

Verification

When we send you the download files, we also send you a license key that’ll allow you to verify the software to give you full access (without verifying, the TTS engine will just recite a demo message). Instructions on how to do this will be sent to you as well.

Integration

After you’ve installed and verified the TTS engine on your server, you need to make sure all of your end-users and/or units can communicate with it.

Look at the list of folders above, the “documents” folder will contain the instructions on how you’ll go about doing that.

Basically, you just need to import the files in the “server-api” folder into each end-user unit, and then make sure you have the IP address of the server and port number so it knows which server to communicate with. Then, you just need to write the code that’ll essentially be the rulebook on how and when your application will send TTS requests to the server.

That’s the basic overview of our VoiceText TTS Server SDK! We hope this blog helped you understand what this product is about and if it is for  you. If it is, then click the button below to get in contact with us now!

I’m Interested in the VoiceText TTS Server SDK!

Learn more about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech Server SDK Overview appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.

Imagine having the power to speak 15 languages in over 40 different voices.

Well, with NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech demo, you have that power. With our interactive demo, you can just select your desired language and voice, enter any text, and listen as it gets instantly converted into beautiful sounding speech!

While there are several text-to-speech demos on the internet today, there’s two big reasons why NeoSpeech’s is the best.

#1 – You can edit the speech

Just like with any of our text-to-speech solutions, our demo gives you the tools to edit the speech to your content.

First, you can use NeoSpeech’s VTML tags to modify certain parts of the speech. These are simple commands that can be written into the text that gives the text-to-speech voice directions. VTML tags can add precisely timed pauses or breaks between words, edit the speed or pitch of how a word or group of words is pronounced, and modify the way the voice will read out a certain word (this is especially useful when using industry-specific jargon and slang).

In addition to that, we also have easy to use sliders that let you adjust the speech and pitch of the entire speech!

These tools give you a glimpse of how versatile our voices are, and how our tools ensure you get perfect sounding speech every time.

#2 – Natural sounding voices

Speaking of getting perfect speech, there’s no question that NeoSpeech has the best text-to-speech voices on the market.

These aren’t the robotic voices that text-to-speech was known for in the early 2000s. Our voices speak in a clear and naturally flowing manner.  Our engineers put in countless hours in developing our voices to make them sound as realistic as possible.

You don’t have to take our word for it, just look at the fact that NeoSpeech’s voices are the most downloaded voices in Voice Dream, a screen reading app for smart phones. Plus, there’s the raving reviews our voices received within our own app, NewsSpeak.

Ready to create beautiful sounding speech? Head over to our demo now!

What do you think?

Did you try our demo? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech

Want to learn more about all the ways Text-to-Speech can be used? Visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And check out our Text-to-Speech Products page to find the right package for any device or application.

If you’re interested in integrating Text-to-Speech technology into your product, please fill out our short Sales Inquiry form and we’ll get you all the information and tools you need.

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The post Check out NeoSpeech’s Interactive Online Text-to-Speech Demo! appeared first on Text2Speech Blog.