Voice characters Dark Lord, Benny, and Michael released

Three new US English voice characters were released:

• Dark Lord: a stellar voice. Install via appbrain.
• Benny: a charming children’s voice. Install via appbrain. https://svoxmobilevoices.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/intro_en-us_child1.mp3
• Michael: a warm and reassuring male voice. Install via appbrain.

Works great in Google Navigation or use Talk-a-Droid Text to Speech to edit messages and save as ringtone.

If you have more than one US English Mobile Voice on your device, set your preferred voice character in Android Settings -> Voice -> Text-to-Speech -> SVOX Classic TTS settings (at the bottom of the Text-to-Speech settings screen).

Loudness increased

Update 2.0.5 of the Classic Engine increases the default loudness of all voices to match the loudness of Pico voices.

The loudness of Classic can be configured in the Svox Classic TTS settings menu at the bottom of the Text-to-speech menu in Android Settings.  The TTS volume slider acts separately from the volume button on your device,  so you can make the TTS softer or louder without changing the loudness of other audio.

Introducing SVOX Mobile Voices

If you use a navigation device you are familiar with a friendly voice guiding you to your destination. SVOX is a Swiss company that creates voices for navigation systems built into BMW, VW, Chrysler, Ferrari, and many other cars.

SVOX is now bringing its voice solutions to the Android Market. Use our voices in cool Android apps for navigation, e-book reading, speech-to-speech translation, language learning, and games.

Download Classic Text To Speech Engine for Android

New: Installing on SD card and loudness

As of today all our voices install to the SD card on Android 2.2.  This was requested by numerous users who could not install our voices due to lack of internal memory.

We will also soon be releasing an update of our engine to increase loudness.

Problem with Navigation solved

Several users reported that voice output in Navigation stops after the first utterance. We’ve released version 2.0.1 today that fixes this problem.

Classic TTS Engine 2.0 released

The new release contains some important improvements:

• correctly handle XML tags in Google navigation
• display voices catalog when opening app instead of showing empty screen
• implement missing activities for Android TTS Settings

Try it out!

Mobile Voices added for Arabic, French, Castilian Spanish, and Dutch

Four new voices are now available in Android Market: a male Arabic voice, and female French, Castilian Spanish, and Dutch voices. Demos of all our voices can now be found on our demo page.

Mobile Voice US English added to Android Market

We have more than 20,000 downloads of the Classic Text-To-Speech Engine and many users have been asking when a US English voice would be released. Now this is finally the case. Go to Android Market and search for “SVOX” or “Mobile Voices US English”, then install the amazingly pleasant and natural sounding female voice.

More languages and voices will be added very soon. The download process will also be made more intuitive, for example opening the Classic Text-To-Speech Engine app will bring up a configuration panel instead of an empty screen.

Android Apps Supporting TTS

• Google Navigation
• TalkToMe: speech-to-speech translation app
• TalkBack in Android Settings -> Accessibility
• uNote: note taking app (uses only US English voices)
• Good Morning: talking alarm clock
• Google Translate: speech-to-speech translation app
• WikiDroyd: offline Wikipedia reader
• Talk – Text to Voice
• ElkDroid: home automation
• Speak It: Text To Speech widget to speak saved text
• Las Vagrants Speaks: TTS editor
• SayMyName Dessert: reads caller’s name, SMS, email
• Langlearner Speaker
• Walky Talky: speaks the address of nearby locations as you pass them (from Google’s eyes-free project)
• Intersection Explorer: walks you through an intersection (from Google’s eyes-free project)

How to Use?

• Install free Classic Text-To-Speech engine
• Install a Mobile Voice, such as US English, German, Mandarin, …
• On Android 2.2 goto Settings -> Voice input & output -> Text-to-speech settings
  On Android 2.1 and earlier install the free TTS Service Extended App and open TTS Service Extended
• Enable Svox Classic TTS engine at the bottom of the screen
• Go to Default Engine and select Svox Classic TTS
• Go to Default Language and select the language for which you have purchased a voice
• Click on “Listen to a preview” to hear a short greeting.
  If the voice you hear is not the voice you purchased, try the following: select Pico again as default engine and play a preview, then again select Svox Classic as default engine and play a preview
• Uncheck “Override App Settings”
• Open an app such as TalkToMe or uNote, enter a text and enjoy your new Mobile Voice reading it aloud