Is there any japanese TTS voice to work with C# SpeechSynthesizer

Question

Is there any Japanese voice for C#'s SpeechSynthesizer TTS? If so please state detailed information about it, better if documentation provided.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Microsoft's Agent had a set of free voices including Japanese based on the L&H TTS3000 engine. The engines were SAPI 4 compatible.

Unfortunately the Microsoft Agent site seems to be unavailable at the moment

Answer 2

Microsoft has a list of third-party TTS engines here. In particular, NeoSpeech has a Japanese TTS engine.

Also, apparently Japanese MS Office 2003 ships with a Japanese TTS engine, but I don't have first-hand knowledge of this.

Answer 3

Have you tried AquesTalk? You can find C# bindings here. I haven't tried them though.

The Windows version AquesTalk is free, they do have versions for other platforms. The same company has also AquesTalk2 (Windows version is free for personal use, otherwise you need to buy a license).

Here's a small demo (YouTube).