Microsoft Speech API

The Microsoft Speech API provides text-to-speech and voice recognition functionality for Windows programs. I've only been interested in the text-to-speech part of it, so that's what this page is about. You need two files to use a text-to-speech program that I've written:

• The Speech API runtime - install this first. It can be downloaded from:
  ftp://ftp.canvaslink.com/pub/tom/sapi/spchapi.exe (770K)

• A voice file - install this second. This is the voice data used to perform text-to-speech, and there are several different voices available from Microsoft. If you want to choose, go to Microsoft's voice page and get one of the 2MB voice files. Otherwise, you can download the Mike voice from one of these addresses:
  http://mssjus.www.conxion.com/msdownload/sapi/patch/tts/msttsm22L.exe (2.36MB)
  http://msvaus.www.conxion.com/msdownload/sapi/patch/tts/msttsm22L.exe (2.36MB)
  http://mschus.www.conxion.com/msdownload/sapi/patch/tts/msttsm22L.exe (2.36MB)
  ftp://ftp.canvaslink.com/pub/tom/sapi/msttsm22L.exe (2.36MB)

All you have to do is download and run each file. After you have installed both of them, text-to-speech-capable software *should* work. You may have to restart this software or even reboot the system if you can't get it working at first.

Back to Tom's Home Page