Text To Speech Engine (free!)

[Scarletpimpofnel]

I used ChatGPT's text to speech engine today for a few simple phrases I need for a project I am building.

It was really helpful and did as I asked BUT the voice sounds awful (robotic with a lisp!)

Anyone know of a free TTS with a decent natural voice?

Many thanks.

[Mr-B]

There's probably an app for that maybe?

[vindaloo79]

Scarletpimpofnel said:

I used ChatGPT's text to speech engine today for a few simple phrases I need for a project I am building.

It was really helpful and did as I asked BUT the voice sounds awful (robotic with a lisp!)

Anyone know of a free TTS with a decent natural voice?

Many thanks.

On my Mac I call this from Python.

[Richyvrlimited]

Immersive reader built into most MS products sounds quite natural

[Scarletpimpofnel]

Thanks for all your suggestions. In the end I used this which is good enough - https://en.text-to-speech.tech/

[ecs]

Eleven Labs have a free tier, their paid plans start at pretty reasonable rates too: https://elevenlabs.io/

[vindaloo79]

ecs said:

Eleven Labs have a free tier, their paid plans start at pretty reasonable rates too: https://elevenlabs.io/

I forgot they had free tier but I’ve used the paid service for some training stuff and to convert a late relatives auto biography to speech and was very impressed

[Scarletpimpofnel]

ecs said:

Eleven Labs have a free tier, their paid plans start at pretty reasonable rates too: https://elevenlabs.io/

I did try the free tier but thought it had a US bias and the free British voices didn't have the tone I needed. Thanks anyway.

[ecs]

I use 11 to voiceover product demo videos and there's definitely a large choice of high quality Biritsh voices in there. It's just whether they're gated to the paid tier? I use 'Archer', which is definitely a paid voice, but when I was first looking I found quite a few candidates. It just takes a long time to find and choose!

I also tried importing my own voice, but you basically need to talk at it for an hour or so, and you need to use a decent mic in a recording booth; I did it the quick way with my phone and the results were poor/echoy. I have a friend who produces podcasts, so I might see if I can hire him and his gear one day and go record myself reading a book