Balabolka - Text To Speech

[KyBunnies]

Okay someone suggested that Balabolka was a great program to use. I downloaded the program and figured out how to listen to some of the books I have. I also downloaded some of the stuff at Microsoft to have a different voice.

I cannot figure out how to get the voices to show up and work. I click on the file that downloaded. It installs but where it went is unknown. I have went to my control panel > Ease of Access > Use text or visual alternative for sounds. Nothing changed. Then I went to control panel > sound again nothing.

I have found a voice I like at Cereproc.com but I do not want to spend the money and then not be able to use the voice.

I have Win 7 Professional 64 bit.
Acer Aspire 5733

Please remember when giving me advice to try that I am old and not tech savvy.

Thanks

[ATDrake]

I think your question may already be answered by the Balabolka FAQ? (about 8 entries down)

My computer is running the 64-bit version of Windows. I have installed 64-bit Runtime package for Microsoft Speech Platform and the English voices. But the list of available voices is still empty. Where is a problem?

Balabolka is 32-bit application. You need to install 32-bit Runtime package for Microsoft Speech Platform also.

Unless you've already done this and it's still not working.

[KyBunnies]

Tried that earlier. Sorry did not think to add that.

[ATDrake]

It looks like the problem may be with the way that Windows 7 seems to only display in the Speech Control Panel 64-bit voices and not 32-bit ones, if I'm reading this technical issue on the Microsoft Community correctly: Windows 7 64 Bit TTS Voice Selection: Problems & Possible Solutions

The guy who wrote it suggests:

There is a fix that permits the display of all installed Voices and
the selection of any as the system default Voice. This is to
execute:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Speech\SpeechUX\sapi.cpl

rather than using the Control Panel TTS Voice selection.

And a follow-up comment by another user (posted in 2010, mind you) says that he managed to get a Cereproc voice working:

I have just successfully installed 32-bit Cereproc Voice Heather in Windows 7 64-bit with no problem by just installing Microsoft SAPI5 and accessing the sapi.cpl in SysWOW as advised above.

So, hopefully that fixes it?

[KyBunnies]

You are amazing ATDrake!!!!

One of the voices is showing up. I now have Scansoft Emily - British.

I downloaded 5 different voices so I do not know why the others are not showing up or where they are at on my C drive. But if this one works hopefully I can get a Cereproc Voice to work.

For me searching on the Microsoft website is Greek. I do not know what to search since I do not know what is wrong.

Again Thank You So Much!!!!!

[ATDrake]

Glad it's working for you now (mostly).

Re: the other speech voices that aren't working, did you perchance install both the 64-bit and the 32-bit version of the Runtime for the Microsoft Speech Platform?

Because on the off chance that you only grabbed the 32-bit version that the Balabolka webpage mentioned in its install/setup instructions, it could be that your computer isn't seeing any 64-bit-only voices that you've installed.

(This is just a wild guess. I'm a Mac person with a hand-me-down backup netbook that's still on Windows XP, so I'm not at all familiar with how Microsoft products work.)

[KyBunnies]

I downloaded directly from the links on the Balabolka website. If it was a 64 or 32 bit I would not know.

My son has a mac but I am not allowed to touch it lol.

I still have an iPod nano 2nd generation.

[ATDrake]

Well, on the Microsoft link for the Runtime, there's two options: x86, which is the 32-bit, and x64, which is 64-bit, so you might want to give it a try by reinstalling both and see if that sorts things out. And apparently they have also have Finnish among the extra voice languages you can get, which is pretty neat. I kind of wonder how it sounds compared to the Mac version.

That said, going back over the Microsoft Community comments, the issue may lie in the other direction, of needing to have the old SAPI5 installed as well as the newer Runtime 11. If you feel like risking it, Balabolka has a direct download hosted on their own server for the Microsoft Speech API 5.1 installer (apparently removed from Microsoft's own website, as far as I can tell), in the 3rd entry in their FAQ.

ETA: Apparently, SAPI 5.4 is built-in to Windows 7, so that probably isn't the cause.

[KyBunnies]

I figured out which voice was English for the US & UK but other than that I could not figure out anything.

When I look at what I downloaded it is x86. So I will download the x64 and install.

Again thanks for your help.

[ATDrake]

The voices are listed with ISO 639-1 language codes (Wikipedia), followed by ISO 3166 (Wikipedia) country codes for the local dialects.

You can go ahead and download any you'd like to try that start with "en", if you're not feeling like exploring other languages just yet. They've Canadian & Australian English in there as well, and there's a whole bunch more US English voices to choose from if you scroll down on the expanded list (ETA: oops, actually only 2 en-US & 5 English voices total, which from your post above, you probably already all have; scrolling artifact visual illusion, I guess).

[KyBunnies]

Well playing around and installing again I have the following voices added. Hazel, Helen, & ZiraPro. I will download the other English voices.

Thanks once again.

[KyBunnies]

I downloaded and got these three added to what I have.

MSSpeech_TTS_en-AU_Hayley.msi

MSSpeech_TTS_en-CA_Heather.msi

MSSpeech_TTS_en-IN_Heera.msi

I have figured out TTS is for text to speech and SR is for speech recognition. I do not need the SR files just the TTS.

See you have helped me more than you will ever know.

[ATDrake]

Awesome! Glad everything's sorted now, and hope you'll be able to enjoy your maybe-future Cereproc voice investment.

(And if your son ever lets you touch his Mac, give the TTS there a try. It's under System Preferences --> Dictation & Speech and there are multiple voices for both genders in most languages (may require downloading), and English dialects for Irish and Scottish as well, if you happen to particularly like those accents.

Or at least get him to use the built-in "Add to iTunes as Spoken Audio Track" Service or whatever they call it in the English language menus to generate some TTS mp3s for you to try out.)

[KyBunnies]

lol me touch his mac. That is a joke. It was a gift to him from my dad for starting college. He wanted one that was $1500 or 1800. He keeps it in some type of sleeve then a protective case. No food or drink is allowed near it. He does not even allow his girl friend to touch it.

I would get a mac if they were not so expensive and then the extra price on all the software.

[ATDrake]

Aside from the food & drink thing*, your son kind of sounds like me. I have special protective equipment for mine as well, and I wouldn't let anyone else handle it for more than 2 minutes while I was watching anxiously over their shoulder even if I trusted them otherwise.

Well, maybe in a few more years he'll want to upgrade and you might get his as a hand-me-down the way I got my dad's old Windows netbook. They are pretty pricey† to begin with, but they really do have a lot of nifty stuff included right in the system (and the past couple of OS X upgrades have been completely free).

* I do eat non-spattering food in front of my Mac, situated well away, and with a paper towel positioned on top of the keyboard, just in case.

† The stats are that most Mac users keep using their Macs for 5 years, in comparison to the standard 3 for a Windows PC. The joke is that after you've bought a Mac, you can't afford another computer for another 5 years…