eSpeak NG Text-to-Speech
- Windows
- Linux, Mac, BSD
- Android
- Documentation
- eSpeak Compatibility
- Historical Versions
- Bugs
- License Information
The eSpeak NG (Next Generation) Text-to-Speech program is an open source speech synthesizer that supports 100 languages and accents. It is based on the eSpeak engine created by Jonathan Duddington. It uses spectral formant synthesis by default which sounds robotic, but can be configured to use Klatt formant synthesis or MBROLA to give it a more natural sound.
See the CHANGELOG for a description of the changes in the various releases and with the eSpeak project.
The following platforms are supported:
Platform | Minimum Version | Status |
---|---|---|
Linux | ||
BSD | ||
Android | 4.0 | |
Windows | Windows 8 | |
Mac |
Windows
Binaries
The Windows version of eSpeak NG 1.49.1 is available as:
- espeak-ng-x64.msi -- 64-bit Windows installer
- espeak-ng-x86.msi -- 32-bit Windows installer
You also need to install the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015.
NOTE: SAPI 5 voices are not currently available in this release of eSpeak NG. There is an issue to track support for this feature.
Building
To build eSpeak NG on Windows, you will need:
- a copy of Visual Studio 2013 or later, such as the Community Edition;
- the Windows 8.1 SDK;
- the WiX installer plugin;
- the pcaudiolib project checked out to
src
(assrc/pcaudiolib
).
You can then open and build the src/windows/espeak-ng.sln
solution in Visual
Studio.
You can also use the Visual Studio tools to build espeak-ng with msbuild
from
the src/windows
directory:
msbuild espeak-ng.sln
If building with Visual Studio 2003, you need to use:
msbuild /p:PlatformToolset=v120 espeak-ng.sln
Linux, Mac, BSD
Dependencies
In order to build eSpeak NG, you need:
- a functional autotools system (
make
,autoconf
,automake
,libtool
andpkg-config
); - a functional c compiler that supports C99 (e.g. gcc or clang).
Optionally, you need:
- the pcaudiolib development library to enable audio output;
- the sonic development library to enable sonic audio speed up support;
- the
ronn
man-page markdown processor to build the man pages.
To build the documentation, you need:
- the
kramdown
markdown processor.
On Debian-based systems such as Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, these dependencies can be installed using the following commands:
Dependency | Install |
---|---|
autotools | sudo apt-get install make autoconf automake libtool pkg-config |
c99 compiler | sudo apt-get install gcc |
sonic | sudo apt-get install libsonic-dev |
ronn | sudo apt-get install ruby-ronn |
kramdown | sudo apt-get install ruby-kramdown |
Building
The first time you build eSpeak NG, or when you want to change how to build eSpeak NG, you need to run the following standard autotools commands:
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr
NOTE: The --prefix
option above will install the files to the /usr
directory, instead of the default /usr/local
location. You can use other
standard configure
options to control the output. For more information,
you can run:
./configure --help
To use a different compiler, or compiler flags, you can specify these before
the configure
command. For example:
CC=clang-3.5 CFLAGS=-Wextra ./configure --prefix=/usr
The espeak-ng
and speak-ng
programs, along with the espeak-ng voices, can
then be built with:
make
NOTE: Building the voice data does not work when using the -jN
option.
If you want to use that option, you can run:
make -j8 src/espeak-ng src/speak-ng
make
The documentation can be built by running:
make docs
Specific languages can be compiled by running:
make LANG
where LANG
is the language code of the given language. More information can
be found in the Adding or Improving a Language
documentation.
Cross Compilation
Because the eSpeak NG build process uses the built program to compile the language and voice data, you need to build it locally first. Once you have built it locally you can perform the cross compilation using:
./configure --build=... --host=... --target=...
make -B src/espeak-ng src/speak-ng
Audio Output Configuration
The following configure
options control which audio interfaces to use:
Option | Audio Interfaces | Default |
---|---|---|
--with-pulseaudio |
PulseAudio | yes |
--with-portaudio |
PortAudio | yes |
--with-sada |
SADA (Solaris) | no |
If pulseaudio and portaudio are both enabled and available, eSpeak NG will choose which one to use at runtime, trying pulseaudio first before falling back to portaudio.
eSpeak NG Feature Configuration
The following configure
options control which eSpeak NG features are enabled:
Option | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
--with-klatt |
Enable Klatt formant synthesis. | yes |
--with-mbrola |
Enable MBROLA voice support. | yes |
--with-sonic |
Use the sonic library to support higher WPM. | yes |
--with-async |
Enable asynchronous commands. | yes |
NOTE: The --with-sonic
option requires that the sonic library and header
is accessible on the system.
Extended Dictionary Configuration
The following configure
options control which of the extended dictionary files
to build:
Option | Extended Dictionary | Default |
---|---|---|
--with-extdict-ru |
Russian | no |
--with-extdict-zh |
Mandarin Chinese | no |
--with-extdict-zhy |
Cantonese | no |
The extended dictionaries are taken from http://espeak.sourceforge.net/data/ and provide better coverage for those languages, while increasing the resulting dictionary size.
Testing
Before installing, you can test the built espeak-ng using the following command from the top-level directory of this project:
ESPEAK_DATA_PATH=`pwd` LD_LIBRARY_PATH=src:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH} src/espeak-ng ...
The ESPEAK_DATA_PATH
variable needs to be set to use the espeak-ng data from
the source tree. Otherwise, espeak-ng will look in $(HOME)
or
/usr/share/espeak-ng-data
.
The LD_LIBRARY_PATH
is set as espeak
uses the libespeak-ng.so
shared
library. This ensures that espeak
uses the built shared library in the
src
directory and not the one on the system (which could be an older
version).
Installing
You can install eSpeak NG by running the following command:
sudo make LIBDIR=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu install
NOTE: The LIBDIR
path may be different to the one on your system (the
above is for 64-bit Debian/Ubuntu releases that use the multi-arch package
structure -- that is, Debian Wheezy or later).
You can find out where espeak-ng is installed to on your system if you already have an espeak-ng install by running:
find /usr/lib | grep libespeak-ng
Android
The espeak-ng sources contain the code for the Android™ port of the application. This is published as the eSpeak for Android program on the Google Play store. It is based on the eyes-free port of eSpeak to the Android platform. This code was originally maintained in a separate branch when the repository tracked eSpeak releases.
Dependencies
In order to build the Android APK file, you need:
- the Android SDK with API 21 support;
- the Android NDK;
- Gradle 2.1 or later.
In order to use Android Studio, you will also need:
Building with Gradle
-
Set the location of the Android SDK:
$ export ANDROID_HOME=<path-to-the-android-sdk>
-
Build the project:
$ ./autogen.sh $ ./configure --with-gradle=<path-to-gradle> $ make apk-release
This will create an android/build/outputs/apk/espeak-release-unsigned.apk
file.
Signing the APK
In order to install the built APK you need to self-sign the package. You can do this by:
-
Creating a certificate, if you do not already have one:
$ keytool -genkey -keystore [YOUR_CERTIFICATE] -alias [ALIAS]
-
Sign the package using your certificate:
$ jarsigner -sigalg MD5withRSA -digestalg SHA1 \ -keystore [YOUR_CERTIFICATE] \ android/build/outputs/apk/espeak-release-unsigned.apk [ALIAS]
-
Align the apk using the zipalign tool.
$ zipalign 4 android/build/outputs/apk/espeak-release-unsigned.apk \ android/build/outputs/apk/espeak-release-signed.apk
Installing
Now, you can install the APK using the adb
tool:
$ adb install -r android/build/outputs/apk/espeak-release-signed.apk
After running, eSpeakActivity
will extract the espeakdata.zip
file into its
own data directory to set up the available voices.
To enable eSpeak, you need to:
- go into the Android
Text-to-Speech settings
UI; - enable
eSpeak TTS
in theEngines
section; - select
eSpeak TTS
as the default engine; - use the
Listen to an example
option to check if everything is working.
Documentation
The main documentation for eSpeak NG provides more information on using and creating voices/languages for eSpeak NG.
The espeak-ng and speak-ng command-line documentation provide a reference of the different command-line options available to these commands with example usage.
eSpeak Compatibility
The espeak-ng binaries expose the same command-line options as espeak, with
several additions to expose new functionality from espeak-ng such as specifying
the output audio device name to use. The build creates symlinks of espeak
to
espeak-ng
, and speak
to speak-ng
.
The espeak speak_lib.h
include file is provided in espeak-ng/speak_lib.h
with
an optional symlink in espeak/speak_lib.h
. This file contains the espeak API as
of 1.48.15, with a change to the ESPEAK_API
macro to fix building on Windows,
and some minor changes to the documentation comments. Thus, the C API is API and
ABI compatible with espeak.
The espeak-data
data has been moved to espeak-ng-data
to avoid conflicts with
espeak. There have been various changes to the voice, dictionary and phoneme files
that make them incompatible with espeak.
The espeak-ng project does not include the espeakedit program. It has moved
the logic to build the dictionary, phoneme and intonation binary files into the
libespeak-ng.so
file that is accessible from the espeak-ng
command line and
C API.
Historical Versions
The historical branch contains the available older releases of the original eSpeak that are not contained in the subversion repository.
1.24.02 is the first version of eSpeak to appear in the subversion repository, but releases from 1.05 to 1.24 are available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/espeak/files/espeak/.
These early releases have been checked into the historical branch, with the 1.24.02 release as the last entry. This makes it possible to use the replace functionality of git to see the earlier history:
git replace 8d59235f 63c1c019
NOTE: The source releases contain the big_endian
, espeak-edit
,
praat-mod
, riskos
, windows_dll
and windows_sapi
folders. These
do not appear in the source repository until later releases, so have
been excluded from the historical commits to align them better with
the 1.24.02 source commit.
Bugs
Report bugs to the espeak-ng issues page on GitHub.
License Information
eSpeak NG Text-to-Speech is released under the GPL version 3 or later license.
The ieee80.c
implementation is taken directly from
ToFromIEEE.c.txt
which has been made available for use in Open Source applications per the
license statement on http://www.realitypixels.com/turk/opensource/.
The only modification made to the code is to comment out the TEST_FP
define
to make it useable in the eSpeak NG library.
The getopt.c
compatibility implementation for getopt support on Windows is
taken from the NetBSD getopt_long
implementation, which is licensed under a
2-clause BSD license.
Android is a trademark of Google Inc.