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[CodeBlog] Text to Speech Synthesis in 1 minute under .NET 3.0 - by simon at Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:36:24 GMT

This is really easy and quick, but something that is handy. Getting speech synthesis to work under .NET 3.0 is really a breeze.

First, add a reference to System.Speech – this contains the managed speech API, it allows you to do recognition and synthesis extremely easily.
Next, add the following to an empty console application/button click event:
using (System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer synth = new System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer())
{
     synth.SelectVoiceByHints(System.Speech.Synthesis.VoiceGender.Female, System.Speech.Synthesis.VoiceAge.Teen, 0);
     synth.Speak("Hello world!");
}
And you’re done! That should have taken less than a minute if your references dialog didn’t take ages to load.
If you have Microsoft Anna (you have Windows Vista, Autoroute or Streets and Trips installed) then this will use that preferentially (that’s the SelectVoiceByHints line), otherwise it may use Microsoft Sam which sounds pretty bad but works well.
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