TTS Engine Recommendation

Question

Can anyone recommend a reliable and cost effective TTS engine for use in a telephony application?

Requirements are:

• Must support the Windows platform
• Must have rich language support including support for accents (ie US English vs GB English)

Nice to have:

• Integration with the .NET platform
• Budget friendly
• Though the output will be directed to a telephony app, it would be nice to be able to have complete control over quality of output (for potential uses in the future)

I'd be interested in hearing any and all experiences with the different packages.

Note: Unfortunately open source packages are not an option around here.

Answer 1

I used to be a developer for the RealSpeak TTS Engine. I have no idea how much it costs, but it was pretty darn reliable and had support for well over a dozen languages on multiple operating systems.

The engine also supported multiple output types for the audio and had a client-server mode available.

Answer 2

AT&T NaturalVoices is also very good and comes with any accents

Demo

AT&T NaturalVoices

Answer 3

I can't vote up the last answer yet (low reputation I suppose). We use ATT Audrey for a UK voice and ATT Crystal for a US voice in our application. We are also cost sensitive and found this to be the best bang for the buck.

Also neospeech still has the best sounding US voice out there (IMO). Not sure of costs.

Answer 4

is AT&T NaturalVoices a paid engine?

Answer 5

Nuance link text they have several engines according to your needs. I believe none of them is opensource.