Ultimate guide to open source text to speech voices

Want to try out text to speech technology? Here's what you need to know about open source text to speech voices.

Open source technology has revolutionized many aspects of our digital world, bringing flexibility, customization, and community collaboration to the forefront. One area where it has made a significant impact is in the field of text to speech (TTS) technology. As demand for TTS systems grow—whether for accessibility, content creation, or language learning—open source projects are stepping up to meet these needs with innovative solutions.

Let’s explores the concept of open source technology, what text to speech is, how open source text to speech works, and the different ways it can be used.

What is open source technology?

Open source technology signifies a concept where the source code of a software or a platform is made freely available to the public. This allows anyone to view, modify, and distribute the project as they see fit. It is built on the principles of collaboration and transparency. High-quality open source projects often have a vibrant community of developers maintaining and improving the code, and can come from organizations as diverse as Microsoft and Mozilla, or from individual contributors on platforms like GitHub.

What is text to speech?

Text to speech is a type of speech synthesis technology that converts text into spoken voice output. TTS systems can be multilingual, capable of speaking different languages like English, Spanish, or Italian. They can read out text files, HTML docs on web pages, and more. This tech has broad use cases, including enabling voiceovers in videos, reading out podcasts or audiobooks, helping the visually impaired, and aiding in language learning.

How open source text to speech works

Open source text to speech (TTS) works by employing a speech synthesizer that generates spoken language. Most modern TTS systems, including open source TTS, rely on deep learning and machine learning architectures for producing high-quality, natural-sounding synthetic voices.

One such example is the open-source TTS toolkit, Coqui TTS. It uses deep learning techniques to convert text into speech. You input a text file, and the toolkit's TTS engine uses machine learning models trained on vast datasets to create audio files in WAV or other formats. The TTS can be executed via a command line, and it also offers an API for more complex runtime operations.

Open source TTS systems can run on a variety of operating systems such as Linux, Windows, and Android. They often come with dependencies, requiring languages like Python or Java to operate.

Another open source text to speech tool is eSpeak. It's a compact, customizable speech synthesizer for English and other languages that can run on various platforms, including Linux and Windows. Its speech output can be produced as a WAV file or directly for real-time applications.

MaryTTS is an open-source, multilingual text to speech Synthesis platform written in Java. It supports German, British and American English, French, Italian, Swedish, Russian, and more. MaryTTS is widely used for voice cloning, creating synthetic voices that sound like a specific person.

The CMU Flite (Festival-lite) is a small, fast runtime speech synthesis engine developed at Carnegie Mellon University and is available on GitHub. It offers text to speech capabilities in English and is well-suited for use on most Unix systems, including Android.

Different ways to use open source text to speech

Open source text to speech offers a wealth of opportunities for developers and users alike. Whether you need to convert text from English or Spanish docs into audio, create a customizable voice assistant, or develop a high-quality voiceover for a podcast, the open-source TTS tools like Coqui, eSpeak, MaryTTS, or Flite provide the necessary capabilities. They represent the spirit of the open source movement: shared knowledge and community collaboration leading to innovative solutions for complex challenges.

Open source TTS solutions have a broad array of applications:

• Creating voiceovers for videos
• Serving as a voice generator for real-time messaging and podcasts
• Converting text from web pages or documents into audio files, enhancing information accessibility
• Supporting language learning in education by providing pronunciation examples in various languages
• Aiding visually impaired or dyslexic individuals in consuming written content, enhancing accessibility
• Used for voice cloning to create personalized voice assistants or customer service bots
• Developing more advanced features like speech recognition, enhancing the capabilities of applications
• Integration into other software using APIs to develop applications that read out notifications or messages in real-time, improving user experience
• Automating the narration for audiobooks or eBooks
• Providing text to speech capability for in-car navigation systems
• Enabling spoken prompts or alerts in home automation systems
• Assisting in language translation apps by providing spoken output
• Creating dynamic voice responses for interactive games or virtual reality applications
• Enhancing e-learning courses with voice instructions or feedback
• Developing voice-controlled IoT devices
• Implementing verbal prompts in fitness or meditation apps
• Offering speech capabilities to robotics or AI projects

Get more advanced text to speech with Speechify Voiceover Studio

Open source text to speech apps can be great if you just want to experiment with TTS, but you’ll need a more advanced solution if you want more natural-sounding voices. That’s where Speechify Voiceover Studio comes in. With this application, you can fully customize the AI voices to your every need and preference. It comes with over 120 lifelike voices to choose from in over 20 different languages and accents. You also get access to fast audio editing and processing, unlimited downloads and uploads, thousands of licensed soundtracks, commercial usage rights, 100 hours of voice generation per year, and 24/7 customer support.

Try out Speechify Voiceover Studio for all your voiceover needs.