Best Chinese TTS, Chinese Text to Speech

[carlo]

I did a quick search in the archives but couldn't find anything on Mandarin/Cantonese Text to Speech products.

I was wondering what everybody thinks currently is the 'best' Chinese TTS application, by which I mean (1) the most natural sounding and (2) the most flexible (for example one which allows me to manually select a reading for a 多音字 or change speed - style of reading).

All the text to speech applications I've ever seen are all rather primitive, does anybody know if some progress has been made?

[jukebox]

科大讯飞 is absolutely the best!

demo:

http://www.iflytek.com/speech%20shows.asp

[roddy]

That demo is pretty impressive - seems to only work reliably in IE, and it was very choppy the first time while it cached, but second time round it was a lot better than I expected. Admittedly the last time I saw anything like this was on a BBC Micro in the computer lab when I was in secondary school or something, but still.

I can't find a great deal of information about the software online - what does stuff like this usually cost? I'm guessing it's pretty expensive. Would it allow you to do stuff like produce mp3's from an article? Hey, combine it with an RSS reader and you could turn an average weblog into a podcast

[in_lab]

Interesting page. For some sentences with common words, it sounds really good.

[carlo]

I phoned to ask about a month ago. Extremely expensive (several 10,000s IIRC, I've jotted it down somewhere), only for commercial use unfortunately (they said they hadn't even thought about language learners purchasing it and that I was the first to ask, I guess they are underestimating that market).

[roddy]

Well, we'll just need an open source version, won't we? Now, who's going to code it for us . . .

[jannetuukkanen]

Here are some samples from chinese speech synthesizers from 1976 to 1997:

http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/archive.html

JanneT

[hlk123]

Hello

I found this website about "machine Chinese voice output":

http://www.linguatec.de/products/tts/information/samples

"The number one voice output software: have all texts read to you in stunning natural quality. Wherever you want - at the computer or on the move on your MP3 player."

.. according to the advertising!

I think its price would be about Euro 50 = US $ 60 ...?

At the moment one cannot buy the software. But soon.

You can hear the demo of several type of text on the website.

Can somebody please test it online and report here whether the software is good enough?

Thank you.

[stephanhodges]

Microsoft has a text to speech engine for Chinese. I have a $30 product for learning Chinese that incorporates it from http://www.learning-chinese.net/ I own the version 5 product. The "demo" for version 6 isn't a demo, just a flash marketing presentation, so I don't know if it's any different than version 5, however.

[gaoxubo]

try this one, mainly for professional use though

http://www.sinovoice.com.cn/e-voice.asp

[stephanhodges]

The voice quality (to me) was astounding! I tried it with this phrase "只有认真地学,才能学好中文"

The only thing the demo didn't do was adjust the speed. Would only talk at speed 5. Anybody got a full 600 characters to "try"?

[roddy]

My new smartphone (which I promise I'll shut up about soon) came with Iflytek's PPC offering, VoiceBook, installed. Got to say I'm quite impressed, the Chinese TTS is pretty good. English lags behind quite a bit though, and I'm not really qualified to judge on the Cantonese.

Trouble is that you can't copy and paste text directly in, so you have to save as .txt file and then open it. Can't open word or html files directly.

[carlo]

I'm out of my depth, but is it possible to emulate a smartphone OS on a windows PC and run VoiceBook?

Sinovoice and Iflytek seem best. The Linguatec demo is very choppy, not that easy to follow (at least for me). I guess you could get used to this style of delivery, but then after a while you may find yourself speaking Chinese like a robot in a bad SF movie.

[roddy]

Maybe something like this? No idea if it would work, but that's where I'd start.

[monto]

I know from my experence of lifetime that, to learn English you cant be a silent one but for Chinese you can. I was, in the first 6 years at least (10 years if we talk national standard).

What I mean, is that you may be quite fluent in talking, you still have long way to go for written one. But if you are good at writing, there would be no problem for oral within a few years.

[roddy]

So Monto, what's the best Chinese TTS?

[fluxs]

Hi,

I am looking for a text to speech tool where I can input traditional characters and that will then say the sentence in mandarin. In addition the tool should allow me to save the sentence then as an MP3 or WAV file.

Of course it would be great if there is a free tool, but actually I wouldn't mind paying for the tool if there isnt.

Thanks a lot!

[fluxs]

HI,

I found another online one, not sure if somewhere someone else has already posted this one...

http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal

it sounded ok to me but still won|t solve my problem that I cant save the sound as a file....

[myflocky]

Yes，科大讯飞 is the best. It has several products series for different customers.

Interphonic is very expensive. and vivivoice is cheaper. you could try 讯飞语音电子书(voicebook) too, much cheaper:

http://voicebook.iflytek.com/

It supports ppc,smartphone and symbian s60 platform.Here is the price:

http://voicebook.iflytek.com/register.aspx

ppc: 9.99USD

smartphone: 9.99USD

Symbian S60: 4.9USD

if you prefer PC use, you could install ppc Emulator in your PC.

Another choice is 方正畅听,which based on 科大讯飞 vivivoice engine.

[ilprincipe]

hello, I have also been trying to find 'the best' TTS voice..

The one on linguatec sounds the best, but for some reason, it appears that the Chinese voices are not available in the home edition(normally 50Euro), instead one must buy the professional version at 500Euros...way too much.

The voices from NeoSpeech (Hui) sounds also very good, but then when I tried to purchase I am only offered the option to buy Lily, which I know is not as good as Hui (if the Lily is the Lily I am thinking about, from Nextup)..perhaps more voices have the same name)...in fact, all voices from NextUp are not that great, in my view.

Iflytech does not appear to have a PC based version, so it probably gets too complicated to use.

Also the voice used in nciuk website also sound very good, but I don't know which one it is..in fact it is almost the same as in linguatec.

In summary, the good voices (linguatec or nciuk) are either too expensive or don't know that they are.

Still, no clear solution to the question...I anyone has different experience than mine, pls let me know, as I also need to get a good voice