System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer - how to customize the voice?

Question

Hello. SpeechSynthesizer allows peaking different voices by using SelectVoiceByHints(VoiceGender, VoiceAge)function (as I understood). But no customization happens if I change the gender and voice age.

Can you explain why? And if I'm doing something wrong, what is correct way to do that?

Thank you.

Answer 1

According to the name of the function, I'd say this is a selector for installed voices. It does not customize the voice in any way, but rather picks one from the repo according to your specified parameters.

So, if there is only one voice installed, he can only pick that one.

Answer 2

Here's a small test program that you can use to discover installed voices:

using System;
using System.Speech.Synthesis;  // Add reference to System.Speech

class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
        var synth = new SpeechSynthesizer();
        foreach (var voice in synth.GetInstalledVoices()) {
            Console.WriteLine(voice.VoiceInfo.Description);
        }
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

Output on my machine: Microsoft Anna - English (United States)

Which is the one and only default voice that's shipped with Windows afaik. Which would of course explain why changing gender and age doesn't have an effect on your machine.