New voice in Calibre

[JohnnyBook]

I frequently use "read aloud" when reading the books on my computer.

Today when I started "read aloud" up, it downloaded something (~100mb) and the voice was very different. I assume previously it was using the computers TTS voices, sort of robotic and quite a few mis-pronunciations, but I have been using it for years and was use to its quirks.)

The new voice sounds very human and only a few mis-pronunciations and is Much better.

In checking the site and the "what's new" on the download page, I see Calibre now uses Piper TTS support, and that is the new voice I am hearing.

But I could not find any info on accessing or controlling it in Calibre.

Mostly I would like to change the voice. The female one now is great, but when I am reading a violent war story, I kind of want to hear a man reading it....

Hearing "I unloaded a full clip from the AK-47 into him, shredding his body and spraying blood all over the room behind him" just does not have the same effect when hearing it in a nice delicate female voice.

[kovidgoyal]

Click the gear icon on the read aloud popup bar and you can select whatever voice you like.

[JohnnyBook]

LOL. I checked everywhere else but that....

Thanks, found it.

[jonathan2022]

Kristen voice is the one i go with for mysteries and i would also use for war. (usa voice) it has the most emotion in it. I hope as it develops. more uk voices will be added. a voice like ava on edge would be nice. but Kovidgoyal i dont think has control over that. anyone use windows 11 does it have more options ?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by jonathan2022

Kristen voice is the one i go with for mysteries and i would also use for war. (usa voice) it has the most emotion in it. I hope as it develops. more uk voices will be added. a voice like ava on edge would be nice. but Kovidgoyal i dont think has control over that. anyone use windows 11 does it have more options ?

I've attached an image with the English language voices on my Windows 11 system that are shown when I click on the gears icon.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Click the gear icon on the read aloud popup bar and you can select whatever voice you like.

https://github.com/dnhkng/GlaDOS/tree/main/models

And I'm glad we're allowed to replace an existing voice in calibre cache folder.

I did that just for the lolz

[kovidgoyal]

Ah, I remember Portal 1 played it many moons ago.

[jonathan2022]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I've attached an image with the English language voices on my Windows 11 system that are shown when I click on the gears icon.

Thanks for replying. I am on windows 10 . My computer doesn't meet the windows 11 requirements. I had heard windows 11 had more options for voices but that must be for accessibility program

[JohnnyBook]

Hmm, where are the speech files stored on my computer?

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by JohnnyBook

Hmm, where are the speech files stored on my computer?

on Windows they're in

C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\calibre-cache\piper-voices

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Ah, I remember Portal 1 played it many moons ago.

last game I played was NFS Hot Pursuit (2010)

I've watched some Portal 1 videos on youtube and it seemed quite amusing

[KindleAZWorKFX]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Click the gear icon on the read aloud popup bar and you can select whatever voice you like.

of the piper voices, some are single voice TTS, while others are multi-speaker voices, in which the are subs where one multi-speaker voice sounds female, but their is also multi-speaker voices for the same voice piper libraries that sound male, so far I cannot see a way when using edit epub and then adding the TTS voice into the epub file, you cannot select or setup multi-speaker voices, to use the ones you want. I did use 7 zip and extract the epub file, and we see that it creates m4a files for the audiobook features. To be clear I am talking about when you edit a ebook from within calibre and select either kepub or epub formats, pocketbook cloud website, might play epub with audio, otherwise audio is playable on pc, no kindle devices, as they don't support this type of audiobook. Add text-to-speech narration within the calibre editor is what I am talking about, it uses the Piper TTS and creates audio files in m4a format within the ebooks which does make them bigger in size once you save the changes of the added audio it generates for the epub or kepub ebook.

https://cloud.pocketbook.digital/ use that for uploading from pc, the pocketbooks android app on tablet, if it works the audio should play in epub format, copilot AI told me it doesn't support kepub with audio but again Copilot could be wrong or right, as I haven't tested that yet, or play them with ear pods on my pc using the calibre ebook viewer app is also an option in windows 11, or linux distro like kubuntu or bazzite distro, I like that one since its based on atomic linux fedora, but I haven't tried calibre or its piper TTS under linux, so I am not sure if flathub has it yet, as atomic linux there is only some ways of adding apps and things like TTS to it. besides using fedora rpm-ostree install command in terminal which bazzite doesn't recommend using those commands, it has other methods of installing apps, I have been able to use bazzite deck nvidia kde plasma version which has steam on startup but for ebooks that I think its better to default to desktop unless you play more games, on my alienware pc, but I use my ebooks mostly on windows 11 25h2 build instead of linux, its not perfect playing linux on some of these newer hardware, so for now I stick more with windows, I do have linux on my laptop but not my desktop pc, for my own reasons.

I would say I don't think google play books support this type of epub file, but I could be wrong, if or when as I haven't tried to send the ebook with TTS to google play books upload page, note copilot AI told me it doesn't support Piper audio epub files but the AI could be wrong about that information.





https://rhasspy.github.io/piper-samp...GB-vctk-medium

https://rhasspy.github.io/piper-samp...-libritts-high







these two links above are explains, and are examples of the voices you can add into calibre for piper TTS, as you can see the example page, has more settings than calibre , but maybe in future builds of calibre it will add more control.

[KindleAZWorKFX]

check book when adding the audio, I noticed that the created F7 feature in editor gets errors from the piper m4a files created, book bug check seems to tell us, its not doing something right, please note my current calibre build under windows is 8.16.2, Add text-to-speech narration within the calibre editor has errors under check book (F7 key) here is the text is displaying, so its doing something wrong for both epub and kepub, maybe this is a new bug, or the add speech for calibre viewer has problems, the audio playback works right, but check book seems to think its not correctly applied I guess.

[kovidgoyal]

Yes, multi speaker voices are not supported. Pick a different actual voice instead. And the warning from check book is just a warning, I need to get around to teaching check book about this type of file.

[KindleAZWorKFX]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

(Yes, multi speaker voices are not supported. Pick a different actual voice instead. And the warning from check book is just a warning, I need to get around to teaching check book about this type of file).

Multi-speaker voices aren’t supported, but they’re still included. I know single-speaker voices work, but some of the multi-speaker ones sound more real to me and clearer in their speech. For example, the LibriTTS voice sounds more natural to me, even if it’s stuck on one voice—maybe it’s the static-like sound I hear through my earbuds—but it’s listed as high quality rather than medium. There also seem to be more high-quality US voices than UK ones. I think a UK voice works well for something like *The Lost World* or *Sherlock Holmes*, while I’d stick with US voices for most other things. Public domain titles like *Winnie the Pooh* might sound better with a UK voice, just as an example, while books by Mark Twain seem better suited to a US voice. I prefer the high-quality voices, though the medium ones are fine too.

--- and below topic of the android app that is able to handle the piperTTS audio in these ebook epub files that calibre is able to create now. ---

I found an Android app on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2016 10.1 running Android 8.1.0, and my other tablet, a 10.4 model, runs Android 12. Colibrio Reader on Android can handle EPUB books with PiperTTS when you edit the ebook and add text-to-speech narration. This app plays the audio alongside the pages, though it doesn’t highlight the text while reading, but the M4A audio files work fine. However, Google Play Books’ read-and-play feature doesn’t work—the file has no sound. I also tried PocketBook with its cloud feature, but the Android app uses the system TTS instead of the PiperTTS audiobook files, so that doesn’t work either.

my question is besides Colibrio Reader, is there any other apps on android that can play the audio with the ebooks?

This is the download page on the Play Store where I found Colibrio Reader, which seems capable of playing the correct audio without using Google TTS.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...olibrio.reader


On my Windows 11, besides the Read Aloud feature in the Calibre viewer, it seems that Thorium Reader can also handle playback of the PiperTTS voices. I don’t recall for sure, but I believe the direct installer for Thorium Reader supports audio playback. I’m not certain about the Microsoft Store version, but I included both links.

https://thorium.edrlab.org/en/

https://github.com/edrlab/thorium-re...etup.3.3.0.exe

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n...hl=en-US&gl=US


But that’s about as far as I’ve gotten in finding Android apps that work. The freeware version of Moon Reader doesn’t work, and FBReader also doesn’t seem to have any options for playing PiperTTS audio.

Do you know of any android epub reader that is able to play them besides Colibrio Reader?

https://www.colibrio.com/