Add Eva Text-to-Speech voice to Voice Attack

[Woofington]

Following this link: http://winaero.com/blog/windows-10-features-new-text-to-speech-voices-for-narrator-and-cortana/

I am able to add Eva, a relatively nice sounding text-to-speech conversion system that is built into windows 10.  However when I go to add a text-to-speech sound to a command in voice attack, the voice drop down will not list this new voice profile. 

How can I get Voice Attack to recognize this new voice profile?  It currently works in Windows 10 and is set as my default device yet it is not present in Voice Attack.

[Gary]

There are two different types of TTS voices in Windows 10.  There's desktop and mobile.  Eva is, 'mobile'.  I'm not clear on all of the details, but the mobile ones are not made available through SAPI.  I tried that one myself.  Sorry about that!

[Woofington]

Oh dang that really sucks!  Is there a list anywhere of VA compatible Text-to-Speech alternatives?  I'd like to find a better voice than the defaults.

[Gary]

I use Hazel and Hedda.  You can get those by installing the English UK speech pack (Hazel) or the German speech pack (Hedda).

It's outlined here: http://voiceattack.com/SMF/index.php?topic=45.0

I'm sure there's more voices with other packs... those are the only two extras that I have (plus Cereproc Heather, but that one costs some).

[Rhaedas]

Here's some instructions that someone pulled of the Star Citizen boards a while ago.

http://deepbot.deep.sg/forums/index.php?topic=5285.0

The basics are that you download the voices you want to use and install them. Then you have to go into the registry and rename two locations, as Windows doesn't link them correctly or something. I've been using Hayley since I found that, because I've got a thing for that AU accent.

[Woofington]

Awesome thanks, that worked but my process differed.  First off I had no Speech server, and only the WOW6432Node was missing the correct registry file.  So I exported the token in the SOFTWARE/Microsoft[etc] portion of the reg, and then just changed the path to include the WOW6432Node of the registry, ran the file afterwards and BAM now I have Eva in VA. 

Thanks again!

[Gary]

[Rhaedas]

Yeah, it's an older how-to, and even then some people had to do things a bit different. Seems Windows has a lot of "flavors". Glad you figured it out. And Gary...lol!

[HookerHeels]

I've tried everything, I can't get Eva to show up in VA, I even checked to make sure the registry keys had been updated (they had been.) If you remember how, or have the regedit file(s), could you explain/give?

(Sorry for reviving a dead post)

[Mike308]

I hate to forward an answer I don't fully understand but there seems to be a rather thorough step-by-step here:

https://superuser.com/questions/1141840/how-to-enable-microsoft-eva-cortanas-voice-on-windows-10

Now were I faced with that long process, I might suggest looking at similar alternatives. I went with a nice british voice, Emma, from IVONA, as sold by a company called Harpo. The American english counterpart, called Amy, sounds very clear as well. They struck me as being a big jump up from the Microsoft default voices. Best of luck, hope this helps.

[Exergist]

Here's some instructions that someone pulled of the Star Citizen boards a while ago.

http://deepbot.deep.sg/forums/index.php?topic=5285.0

The basics are that you download the voices you want to use and install them. Then you have to go into the registry and rename two locations, as Windows doesn't link them correctly or something. I've been using Hayley since I found that, because I've got a thing for that AU accent.

Thanks again for sharing this. I tried it on my Windows 7 PC and was able to get all the available english TTS voices

[Exergist]

I noticed that the newly added TTS options do NOT respect custom entries to the Windows Speech Dictionary . So if you add an entry called "puppies" to the speech dictionary and provide a custom voiced pronunciation for this entry as "kitties" all the extra options added with the above method still result in a TTS output of "puppies." On my Windows 7 PC I have Microsoft Anna available by default (no registry edits needed) and she DOES respect the dictionary (i.e, she'll say "kitties" when she's supposed to say "puppies" as outlined above).

Might have something to do with the registry changes. Maybe additional edits are needed so that the added TTS voices actually respect entries in the speech dictionary?