Microsoft Neural Voices on Speech Central

By Labsii, 1 December, 2022

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Speech Central has added the support for Microsoft Neural Voices in the latest version. Those are high quality voices provided online through Microsoft's servers.

There are several apps that provide high quality server side voices like Speechify and Natural Reader, but Speech Central does it differently. Most notably Speech Central doesn't sell those voices to end users or have some fees from their sales which leads to significant benefits:
- There is a free tier provided by Microsoft. As services like Speechify have a cap on how much you can read with high quality voices it turns out that at the moment you get for free in Speech Central what you would pay 139$/year in Speechify.
- If you need more than that cap you can go to a paid tier and pay per consumption without any cap (some guideline is that you can expect around 1$ hour of listening at 1x speed).
- As you are buying directly from Microsoft paid tier is significantly cheaper per hour. You don't have to purchase over the App Store and thus there is no Apple's 15% fee that at the end has to be calculated into the price, and Speech Central takes no profit either.

There are downsides of this approach too:
- it is surely easier to activate the subscription than to register an account on Microsoft Azure and get API key, though I don't think that this is too complicated either and few users have gone through that already.
- if you are using the paid tier you are technically exposed to pay as much as you consume. While I don't expect any unpleasant results it is suggested for everyone to track their cost through the portal at least on the start to avoid such surprises.

Here is the copy of the help article from https://speechcentral.net/ios-help/#azure :

1. Create the Azure account and subscription (note: currently there is a version with free limited tier and paid version) from here.
2. Create the cognitive resource from here
3. You should be able to see the resource in the Azure Portal. When you open it in the left sidebar there is the option ‘Keys and Endpoints’ that you can use to create and get data about API key.

Please note that:

- Speech Central is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Your relationship with Microsoft is in no way connected to your relationship with Speech Central as Speech Central doesn’t take any fee from your payment to Microsoft.
- Microsoft paid tier is fairly expensive (the price at the moment of writing of this article is 16$/million characters which means that listening to larger books would cost 10$ or more). We have picked to support Microsoft as all other providers (Google, Amazon, IBM) charge the same amount but don’t have a free tier at the moment.
- If you use their paid tier it is strongly suggested for you to track your costs in their portal and avoid unpleasant surprises (there is a page ‘Cost Analysis’ that can be activated from the option right below ‘Keys and Endpoints’ that you have used in the previous step).

To activate those voices go to Extras tab > Settings > Voice > Microsoft Neural Voices (activated from the menu at the top left of the screen).

Options

Comments

By Labsii on Friday, December 23, 2022 - 22:27

Currently this is on iOS. The Mac version may get the support in the future, but there are limitations as Microsoft doesn't officially support the Mac for those services at the moment so some hacks might be needed and as such it isn't certain that it will succeed.

By Chris on Friday, December 23, 2022 - 22:27

What are the limits on the free version? This seems more like an interesting toy unless you don't mind spending quite a lot of money.

By Labsii on Friday, December 23, 2022 - 22:27

As noted above Microsoft currently provides for free as much as Speechify provides at the price 139$/year. That means half million characters a month (Microsoft) vs 100000 words (Speechify paid). That should be something like 8 hours at 1x speed. Should be enough for most of the books.

If you pick the free tier you are granted not to pay anything just the service may stop to work at some point if you get above the threshold till the next month.

By ming on Friday, December 23, 2022 - 22:27

I have this app installed on my IPhone.
but, it seems does not have the microsoft voices for me to choose.
did I need to upgrade it or anything?

By Labsii on Friday, December 23, 2022 - 22:27

The App Store should update you to the latest version automatically, but if it hasn’t then you need to update.

By Labsii on Friday, December 23, 2022 - 22:27

Microsoft voices are available on the free version.

Also most users here have VoiceOver on so they are using the Pro version for free as my donation to the community.

By mr grieves on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 22:27

I somehow missed this when it was originally posted.

Are these the voices that Edge uses on the Mac? I love those voices - if anything they have spoiled my enjoyment of TTS apps like VDR and SC because the Apple and other voices really aren't up to the same level.

If so, this is a huge advantage that Speech Central has in my opinion. It looks a bit fiddly, but that's fair enough considering the way you are making it available without a subscription. I just need to find some time from somewhere!

With all the talk on here about Speech Central, plus finding out about this, I am definitely considering switching from VDR. I originally used Speech Central before and it was quite good but I was persuaded by all the hype around VDR that it would be much better. But considering my light use I think maybe I was wrong about that.

Anyway, I don't want to turn this into another VDR thread. But just wanted to check about the voices.

Thanks so much for making this app free to the blind community. This feature sounds amazing - I wish I'd noticed this post when it originally appeared!

By Labsii on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 22:27

Microsoft doesn't specify on which voices it uses in Edge, but from the logical point these voices shouldn't be worse, they could be possibly better.

I am saying that because when you register you have some monthly limit on how much you can use in a month for free (certainly more than enough for the light use that you mention), and Edge doesn't have that limit.

By mr grieves on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 22:27

Thanks very much for the reply. I will give it a go when I'm feeling brave!