🗣️ aspeak

A simple text-to-speech client which enables you to try out Azure's speech synthesis API directly in your terminal. 😆

You can try the Azure TTS API online: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/text-to-speech

Important Notice

It seems that Microsoft has deliberately done some changes to prevent 3rd party tools(such as aspeak) using their trial service.

You are expected to receive this error if you are still using aspeak < 3.1.0:

WebSocket upgrade failed: Unspecified connection error (200). USP state: 2. Received audio size: 0 bytes.

Please upgrade to aspeak >= 3.1.0.

Credit goes to @ujmyvq1582, who proposed a fix and @flt6, who implemented the fix.

Installation

$ pip install -U aspeak

Data Privacy

We don't store your data, and Microsoft doesn't store your data according to information available on this page.

Limitations

Since we are using Azure Cognitive Services, there are some limitations:

Quota	Free (F0)3
Max input length	1000 characters
Max number of transactions per certain time period per Speech service resource
Real-time API. Prebuilt neural voices and custom neural voices.	20 transactions per 60 seconds
Adjustable	No4
HTTP-specific quotas
Max audio length produced per request	10 min
Max total number of distinct <voice> and <audio> tags in SSML	50
Websocket specific quotas
Max audio length produced per turn	10 min
Max total number of distinct <voice> and <audio> tags in SSML	50
Max SSML message size per turn	64 KB

This table is copied from Azure Cognitive Services documentation

The 1000 characters limitation was added recently(2022-09-01).

And the limitations may be subject to change. The table above might become outdated in the future. Please refer to the latest Azure Cognitive Services documentation for the latest information.

Attention: If the result audio is longer than 10 minutes, the audio will be truncated to 10 minutes and the program will not report an error.

Using aspeak as a Python library

See DEVELOP.md for more details. You can find examples in src/examples.

Usage

usage: aspeak [-h] [-V | -L | -Q | [-t [TEXT] [-p PITCH] [-r RATE] [-S STYLE] [-R ROLE] [-d STYLE_DEGREE] | -s [SSML]]]
              [-f FILE] [-e ENCODING] [-o OUTPUT_PATH] [-l LOCALE] [-v VOICE]
              [--mp3 [-q QUALITY] | --ogg [-q QUALITY] | --webm [-q QUALITY] | --wav [-q QUALITY] | -F FORMAT] 

Try speech synthesis service(Provided by Azure Cognitive Services) in your terminal!

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -V, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -L, --list-voices     list available voices, you can combine this argument with -v and -l
  -Q, --list-qualities-and-formats
                        list available qualities and formats
  -t [TEXT], --text [TEXT]
                        Text to speak. Left blank when reading from file/stdin
  -s [SSML], --ssml [SSML]
                        SSML to speak. Left blank when reading from file/stdin
  -f FILE, --file FILE  Text/SSML file to speak, default to `-`(stdin)
  -e ENCODING, --encoding ENCODING
                        Text/SSML file encoding, default to "utf-8"(Not for stdin!)
  -o OUTPUT_PATH, --output OUTPUT_PATH
                        Output file path, wav format by default
  --mp3                 Use mp3 format for output. (Only works when outputting to a file)
  --ogg                 Use ogg format for output. (Only works when outputting to a file)
  --webm                Use webm format for output. (Only works when outputting to a file)
  --wav                 Use wav format for output
  -F FORMAT, --format FORMAT
                        Set output audio format (experts only)
  -l LOCALE, --locale LOCALE
                        Locale to use, default to en-US
  -v VOICE, --voice VOICE
                        Voice to use
  -q QUALITY, --quality QUALITY
                        Output quality, default to 0

Options for --text:
  -p PITCH, --pitch PITCH
                        Set pitch, default to 0. Valid values include floats(will be converted to percentages), percentages such as 20% and -10%, absolute values like 300Hz, and
                        relative values like -20Hz, +2st and string values like x-low. See the documentation for more details.
  -r RATE, --rate RATE  Set speech rate, default to 0. Valid values include floats(will be converted to percentages), percentages like -20%, floats with postfix "f" (e.g. 2f
                        means doubling the default speech rate), and string values like x-slow. See the documentation for more details.
  -S STYLE, --style STYLE
                        Set speech style, default to "general"
  -R {Girl,Boy,YoungAdultFemale,YoungAdultMale,OlderAdultFemale,OlderAdultMale,SeniorFemale,SeniorMale}, --role {Girl,Boy,YoungAdultFemale,YoungAdultMale,OlderAdultFemale,OlderAdultMale,SeniorFemale,SeniorMale}
                        Specifies the speaking role-play. This only works for some Chinese voices!
  -d {values in range 0.01-2 (inclusive)}, --style-degree {values in range 0.01-2 (inclusive)}
                        Specifies the intensity of the speaking style.This only works for some Chinese voices!

Attention: If the result audio is longer than 10 minutes, the audio will be truncated to 10 minutes and the program will not report an error. Unreasonable high/low values for
pitch and rate will be clipped to reasonable values by Azure Cognitive Services.Please refer to the documentation for other limitations at
https://github.com/kxxt/aspeak/blob/main/README.md#limitations. By the way, we don't store your data, and Microsoft doesn't store your data according to information available on
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/text-to-speech/

• If you don't specify -o, we will use your default speaker.
• If you don't specify -t or -s, we will assume -t is provided.
• You must specify voice if you want to use special options for --text.

Special Note for Pitch and Rate

• rate: The speaking rate of the voice.
  • If you use a float value (say 0.5), the value will be multiplied by 100% and become 50.00%.
  • You can use the following values as well: x-slow, slow, medium, fast, x-fast, default.
  • You can also use percentage values directly: +10%.
  • You can also use a relative float value (with f postfix), 1.2f:
    • According to the Azure documentation,
    • A relative value, expressed as a number that acts as a multiplier of the default.
    • For example, a value of 1f results in no change in the rate. A value of 0.5f results in a halving of the rate. A value of 3f results in a tripling of the rate.
• pitch: The pitch of the voice.
  • If you use a float value (say -0.5), the value will be multiplied by 100% and become -50.00%.
  • You can also use the following values as well: x-low, low, medium, high, x-high, default.
  • You can also use percentage values directly: +10%.
  • You can also use a relative value, (e.g. -2st or +80Hz):
    • According to the Azure documentation,
    • A relative value, expressed as a number preceded by "+" or "-" and followed by "Hz" or "st" that specifies an amount to change the pitch.
    • The "st" indicates the change unit is semitone, which is half of a tone (a half step) on the standard diatonic scale.
  • You can also use an absolute value: e.g. 600Hz

Note: Unreasonable high/low values will be clipped to reasonable values by Azure Cognitive Services.

About Custom Style Degree and Role

According to the Azure documentation , style degree specifies the intensity of the speaking style. It is a floating point number between 0.01 and 2, inclusive.

At the time of writing, style degree adjustments are supported for Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified) neural voices.

According to the Azure documentation , role specifies the speaking role-play. The voice acts as a different age and gender, but the voice name isn't changed.

At the time of writing, role adjustments are supported for these Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified) neural voices: zh-CN-XiaomoNeural, zh-CN-XiaoxuanNeural, zh-CN-YunxiNeural, and zh-CN-YunyeNeural.

Examples

Speak "Hello, world!" to default speaker.

$ aspeak -t "Hello, world"

List all available voices.

$ aspeak -L

List all available voices for Chinese.

$ aspeak -L -l zh-CN

Get information about a voice.

$ aspeak -L -v en-US-SaraNeural

Output

Microsoft Server Speech Text to Speech Voice (en-US, SaraNeural)
Display Name: Sara
Local Name: Sara @ en-US
Locale: English (United States)
Gender: Female
ID: en-US-SaraNeural
Styles: ['cheerful', 'angry', 'sad']
Voice Type: Neural
Status: GA

Save synthesized speech to a file.

$ aspeak -t "Hello, world" -o output.wav

If you prefer mp3/ogg/webm, you can use --mp3/--ogg/--webm option.

$ aspeak -t "Hello, world" -o output.mp3 --mp3
$ aspeak -t "Hello, world" -o output.ogg --ogg
$ aspeak -t "Hello, world" -o output.webm --webm

List available quality levels and formats

$ aspeak -Q

Output

Available qualities:
Qualities for wav:
-2: Riff8Khz16BitMonoPcm
-1: Riff16Khz16BitMonoPcm
 0: Riff24Khz16BitMonoPcm
 1: Riff24Khz16BitMonoPcm
Qualities for mp3:
-3: Audio16Khz32KBitRateMonoMp3
-2: Audio16Khz64KBitRateMonoMp3
-1: Audio16Khz128KBitRateMonoMp3
 0: Audio24Khz48KBitRateMonoMp3
 1: Audio24Khz96KBitRateMonoMp3
 2: Audio24Khz160KBitRateMonoMp3
 3: Audio48Khz96KBitRateMonoMp3
 4: Audio48Khz192KBitRateMonoMp3
Qualities for ogg:
-1: Ogg16Khz16BitMonoOpus
 0: Ogg24Khz16BitMonoOpus
 1: Ogg48Khz16BitMonoOpus
Qualities for webm:
-1: Webm16Khz16BitMonoOpus
 0: Webm24Khz16BitMonoOpus
 1: Webm24Khz16Bit24KbpsMonoOpus

Available formats:
- Riff8Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Riff16Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Audio16Khz128KBitRateMonoMp3
- Raw24Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Raw48Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Raw16Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Audio24Khz160KBitRateMonoMp3
- Ogg24Khz16BitMonoOpus
- Audio16Khz64KBitRateMonoMp3
- Raw8Khz8BitMonoALaw
- Audio24Khz16Bit48KbpsMonoOpus
- Ogg16Khz16BitMonoOpus
- Riff8Khz8BitMonoALaw
- Riff8Khz8BitMonoMULaw
- Audio48Khz192KBitRateMonoMp3
- Raw8Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Audio24Khz48KBitRateMonoMp3
- Raw24Khz16BitMonoTrueSilk
- Audio24Khz16Bit24KbpsMonoOpus
- Audio24Khz96KBitRateMonoMp3
- Webm24Khz16BitMonoOpus
- Ogg48Khz16BitMonoOpus
- Riff48Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Webm24Khz16Bit24KbpsMonoOpus
- Raw8Khz8BitMonoMULaw
- Audio16Khz16Bit32KbpsMonoOpus
- Audio16Khz32KBitRateMonoMp3
- Riff24Khz16BitMonoPcm
- Raw16Khz16BitMonoTrueSilk
- Audio48Khz96KBitRateMonoMp3
- Webm16Khz16BitMonoOpus

Increase/Decrease audio qualities

# Less than default quality.
$ aspeak -t "Hello, world" -o output.mp3 --mp3 -q=-1
# Best quality for mp3
$ aspeak -t "Hello, world" -o output.mp3 --mp3 -q=3

Read text from file and speak it.

$ cat input.txt | aspeak

or

$ aspeak -f input.txt

with custom encoding:

$ aspeak -f input.txt -e gbk

Read from stdin and speak it.

$ aspeak

or (more verbose)

$ aspeak -f -

maybe you prefer:

$ aspeak -l zh-CN << EOF
我能吞下玻璃而不伤身体。
EOF

Speak Chinese.

$ aspeak -t "你好，世界！" -l zh-CN

Use a custom voice.

$ aspeak -t "你好，世界！" -v zh-CN-YunjianNeural

Custom pitch, rate and style

$ aspeak -t "你好，世界！" -v zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural -p 1.5 -r 0.5 -S sad
$ aspeak -t "你好，世界！" -v zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural -p=-10% -r=+5% -S cheerful
$ aspeak -t "你好，世界！" -v zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural -p=+40Hz -r=1.2f -S fearful
$ aspeak -t "你好，世界！" -v zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural -p=high -r=x-slow -S calm
$ aspeak -t "你好，世界！" -v zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural -p=+1st -r=-7% -S lyrical

Advanced Usage

Use a custom audio format for output

Note: When outputing to default speaker, using a non-wav format may lead to white noises.

$ aspeak -t "Hello World" -F Riff48Khz16BitMonoPcm -o high-quality.wav

About This Application

• I found Azure TTS can synthesize nearly authentic human voice, which is very interesting 😆.
• I wrote this program to learn Azure Cognitive Services.
• And I use this program daily, because espeak and festival outputs terrible 😨 audio.
  • But I respect 🙌 their maintainers' work, both are good open source software and they can be used off-line.
• I hope you like it ❤️.

Alternative Applications

• https://github.com/skygongque/tts
• https://github.com/LuckyHookin/edge-TTS-record/