Is there a TTS Engine with a Natural Voice?

Question

I was looking for a decent text to speech software and could not find any with a natural voice. I hate listening to the Microsoft robotic voices and although Anna does away with it in Windows 7 (and probably vista), she is still far from natural.

What I need:

A free text to speech library

Preferred Language: C#, Java

I plan to create a decent TTS software or better still, an MS Word/Office plugin if things go smoothly. I am working on Windows 7 (obviously).

Answer 1

While I cannot guarantee that the voices will sound good, FreeTTS http://freetts.sourceforge.net/docs/index.php is entirely written in the Java programming language. For very small languages (such as the talking clock example) it sounds pretty good.

If you are interested or able to use JNI, you can use eSpeak http://sourceforge.net/projects/espeak/, which can hook up to Microsoft's SAPI and grant (?) access to Anna's voice.

I personally used Quadmore's Java to Microsoft SAPI Bridge http://www.quadmore.com/JAVA_to_SAPI/ briefly, but I was doing my work on XP, not Windows 7 so I don't know if that will work.

Good luck!