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Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

tts-api.com

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Re: Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

#21

Post by riobard »

For those who want to run their own copy of this, here's how to do it:

1. Find a Mac-based server (a co-located Mac Mini will be fine)

2. Run `say -o output.wav $TEXT` to generate the voice

3. Compress the WAVE file with `lame` or the system builtin `afconvert` to get the MP3 file.

`say` command supports multiple languages and dialects, but you'll have to install the necessary voice engines in OS X 10.8. Man page for `say` can be found here http://pastebin.com/nWbvJAAX

The complete list of voices/languages supported so far:

* English (Australia): 2 voices

* English (India): 1 voice

* English (Ireland): 1 voice

* English (Scottish): 1 voice

* English (South Africa): 1 voice

* English (UK): 3 voices

* English (US - Female): 7 voices

* English (US - Male): 6 voices

* English (US - Novelty): 14 voices

* Arabic (Saudi Arabia): 1 voice

* Chinese (China): 1 voice

* Chinese (HK): 1 voice

* Chinese (Taiwan): 1 voice

* Czech: 1 voice

* Danish: 1 voice

* Dutch (Belgium): 1 voice

* Dutch (Netherlands): 2 voices

* Finnish: 1 voice

* French (Canada): 2 voices

* French (France): 4 voices

* German (Germany): 3 voices

* Greek: 2 voices

* Hindi: 1 voice

* Hungarian: 1 voice

* Indonesian: 1 voice

* Italian: 3 voices

* Japanese: 1 voice

* Korean: 2 voices

* Norwegian Bokmal: 1 voice

* Polish: 1 voice

* Portuguese (Brazil): 1 voice

* Portuguese (Portugal): 1 voice

* Romanian: 1 voice

* Russia: 1 voice

* Slovak: 1 voice

* Spanish (Mexico): 2 voices

* Spanish (Spain): 2 voices

* Swedish: 2 voices

* Thai: 1 voice

* Turkish: 1 voice

Re: Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

#22

Post by stcredzero »

snoonan wrote: post #3

Excellent and dead easy to use. Great work on making it simple. I was actually looking for a similar API like this just a few hours ago, but with some other languages as well. What's the TTS engine driving this? BTW, One small critique on the page copy... "You expect" could be more politely expressed and in terms of the user's pov/benefit.

> Excellent and dead easy to use. Great work on making it simple.

The acronym should reflect this ease of use for proper pronunciation. How about Text Intelligently To Speech?

Re: Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

#24

Post by lefthansolo »

This is a nice one, however I'm still confounded by the lack of progress since bell labs made an online text to speech converter many years ago. Particularly, the notion that the interpretation of each sentence is idempotent is just wrong. Want to see what I mean? A human would not speak like the following; there should be differences in intonation, "emotion" (sounding bored, angry, excited, etc. that varies depending on the number of times "dogs" would be said), speed, and delay. In addition, you have to breathe at some point, and even the best audiobooks have some level of breath noise.

http://tts-api.com/tts.mp3?q=dogs.%20dogs.%20dogs.%20dogs.%2....

Re: Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

#26

Post by abava »

riobard wrote: post #21

For those who want to run their own copy of this, here's how to do it: 1. Find a Mac-based server (a co-located Mac Mini will be fine) 2. Run `say -o output.wav $TEXT` to generate the voice 3. Compress the WAVE file with `lame` or the system builtin `afconvert` to get the MP3 file. `say` command supports multiple languages and dialects, but you'll have to install the necessary voice engines in OS X 10.8. Man page for…

Russian does not work: http://tts-api.com/tts.mp3?q=%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B5%...

Re: Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

#27

Post by yoda_sl »

Quite cool... But if this is generated by the text to speech engine from OS X, then I am afraid it is going beyond the license that come up with OS X. I remember reading through that license and it was clearly stated that using the OS X TTS was only for local usage on your Mac.

So I am extremely curious to know the license behind this tts-api? Can the OP provide such info or provide some of the tech behind it?

Re: Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

#29

Post by snoonan »

riobard wrote: post #21

For those who want to run their own copy of this, here's how to do it: 1. Find a Mac-based server (a co-located Mac Mini will be fine) 2. Run `say -o output.wav $TEXT` to generate the voice 3. Compress the WAVE file with `lame` or the system builtin `afconvert` to get the MP3 file. `say` command supports multiple languages and dialects, but you'll have to install the necessary voice engines in OS X 10.8. Man page for…

Careful, though. This is expressly against the license agreement for Mac OS X.

Re: Show HN: TTS-API - Text-to-speech API

#30

Post by Toshio »

riobard wrote: post #21

For those who want to run their own copy of this, here's how to do it: 1. Find a Mac-based server (a co-located Mac Mini will be fine) 2. Run `say -o output.wav $TEXT` to generate the voice 3. Compress the WAVE file with `lame` or the system builtin `afconvert` to get the MP3 file. `say` command supports multiple languages and dialects, but you'll have to install the necessary voice engines in OS X 10.8. Man page for…

The open-source, cross-platform equivalent of `say` is a piece of software called "SVOX Pico". There is also a Python-based wrapper for it called picospeaker. Relevant AUR link for ArchLinux users:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/picospeaker/

EDIT: SVOX Pico is a component of the Android OS.

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