Adding other Microsoft TTS voices

If you're playing around with TTS--in RadioDJ or any other Windows program--you might find that the pre-installed system voice on your computer leaves much to be desired. The instructions I'm about to give are a bit of a hack and only complete to the point in which I got it to work for the purpose I had in mind. I've gotten this little hack to work in Vista 32 and 7 64-bit versions...

First, seek out and install Microsoft Speech Server 11.0 x86 [aka Microsoft Speech Platform - Runtime (Version 11)][1].

=> 1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27225

Second, get and install the voices for Speech Server 11.0 [Microsoft Speech Platform - Runtime Languages (Version 11)][2].

=> 2: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27224

Third--the fun part--open regedit and export the "Tokens" for the newly installed voices. Depending upon your version of windows, you'll find the voices referenced under one or both of the following:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech Server\v11.0\Voices HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Speech Server\v11.0\Voices

...if you've found them, right-click and export the "Tokens" folder to a file -- say, something like voices1.reg and voices2.reg, respectively.

Edit those exported entries with your favorite text-editor, replacing the instances of \Speech Server\v11.0\ with \Speech\ . When you're done, save, and then import the entries back into the registry (double-clicking will suffice).

You may want to reboot the machine--I didn't have to on one, but did on the other.

After all that's done, all you have to do is change your computer's default voice--c'est voila!--no more Microsoft Anna!

Personally, the voice I like the sound of Zira Pro.

...and for the RadioDJ user, don't forget--if you're using the AutoDJ TTS feature--the voice number referenced in the XML files begins numbering at 0, and will go in order that it appears in the TTS plugin's drop-down voice list.

References/Additional Info:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2226829[3] http://www.radiodj.ro/community/index.php?topic=5073.0[4] Tags: #radio automation, #RadioDJ, #TTS

=> 3: https://web.archive.org/web/20140710070222/http://forums.anandtech.com:80/showthread.php?t=2226829 | 4: http://www.radiodj.ro/community/index.php?topic=5073.0

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