Enumerating TTS Engines using System.Speech.Synthesizer

Charles Oppermann — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:48:21 GMT

Here is a quick and dirty C# console application that will list out the installed TTS engines and associated properties. Make sure you add System.Speech to your project's list of references.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Speech;
using System.Speech.Synthesis;
using System.Speech.AudioFormat;

namespace SelectVoice
{
  class SelectVoice
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("SelectVoice Example");
      SpeechSynthesizer ttsSynth = new SpeechSynthesizer();

      Console.WriteLine("Listing installed speech synthesizer voices...");
      foreach (InstalledVoice ttsVoice in ttsSynth.GetInstalledVoices())
      {
        Console.WriteLine("Name:\t{0}", ttsVoice.VoiceInfo.Name);
        Console.WriteLine("Desc:\t{0}", ttsVoice.VoiceInfo.Description);
        Console.WriteLine("Id:\t{0}", ttsVoice.VoiceInfo.Id);
        Console.WriteLine("Gender:\t{0}", ttsVoice.VoiceInfo.Gender);
        Console.WriteLine("Age:\t{0}", ttsVoice.VoiceInfo.Age);

        Console.WriteLine("Supported Audio Formats:");
        foreach (SpeechAudioFormatInfo audioFormat in ttsVoice.VoiceInfo.SupportedAudioFormats)
        {
          Console.WriteLine("\tEncodingFormat:\t{0}", audioFormat.EncodingFormat);
          Console.WriteLine("\tChannelCount:\t{0}", audioFormat.ChannelCount);
          Console.WriteLine("\tBits/sec:\t{0}", audioFormat.BitsPerSample);
          Console.WriteLine("\tAvg Bytes/sec:\t{0}", audioFormat.AverageBytesPerSecond);
          Console.WriteLine("\tSamples/sec:\t{0}", audioFormat.SamplesPerSecond);
          Console.WriteLine("\tBlockAlign:\t{0}", audioFormat.BlockAlign);
        }

        Console.WriteLine("Additional Information:");
        foreach(KeyValuePair<string, string> kvp in ttsVoice.VoiceInfo.AdditionalInfo)
          Console.WriteLine("\t{0}:  {1}", kvp.Key, kvp.Value);
        Console.WriteLine();
      }
    Console.WriteLine("Finished listing installed voices.");

    ttsSynth.SelectVoice("Microsoft Anna");
    ttsSynth.Speak("Greetings, my name is " + ttsSynth.Voice.Name);
    }
  }
}

All the Cool Developers use Speech APIs : System.Speech

Enumerating TTS Engines using System.Speech.Synthesizer