Ubuntu – Natural Sounding Text to Speech

software-recommendationtext to speech

I am looking for some easy to install text to speech software for Ubuntu that sounds natural. I've installed Festival, Gespeaker, etc., but nothing sounds very natural. All very synthetic and hard to understand.

Any recommendations out there?

Best Answer

SVOX pico2wave

A very minimalistic TTS, a better sounding than espeak or mbrola (to my mind). Some information here.

I don't understand why pico2wave is, compared to espeak or mbrola, rarely discussed. It's small, but sounds really good (natural). Without modification you'll hear a natural sounding female voice.

AND ... compared to Mbrola, it recognise Units and speaks it the right way!
For example:

  • 2°C → two degrees
  • 2m → two meters
  • 2kg → two kilograms

After installation I use it in a script:

#!/bin/bash
pico2wave -w=/tmp/test.wav "$1"
aplay /tmp/test.wav
rm /tmp/test.wav

Then run it with the desired text:

<scriptname>.sh "hello world"

or read the contents of an entire file:

<scriptname>.sh "$(cat <filename>)"

That's all to have a lightweight, stable working TTS on Ubuntu.

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