The Acapela TTS for Windows consists of two parts: The software Development Kit is a developer license (with libraries, sample code) and a support and maintenance service. You pay a yearly fee. The Commercial Licence: When a product/application/service has been developed incorporating our software, a royalties-bearing agreement will be worked out.

1. Acapela TTS allows you to buy and install our high quality voices and integrate them in your Android Device to use them with the system or any TTS compatible applications (such Google TalkBack.
2. Acapela multimedia tts free download. EGuideDog free software for the blind eGuideDog project develops free software for the blind. Currently, we focus on WebSpeech, Ekho TTS a.

If you want to add none trivial speech output to your application, no matter if it’s a desktop, web, or mobile app, you need to find a way to convert text into speech (TTS) and eventually provide it in a sound format (like MP3) that can be played back on end-users’ devices. While some operating systems come with TTS capabilities built-in, the quality of the voice sound may vary more than you like, and an user experience spanning multiple OSes and platforms, almost always justifies or even requires the deployment of a TTS Web service.

All this is old news of course and companies like Nuance, iSpeech, or NeoSpeech provide Text-To-Speech services, varying greatly in price, quality, and performance. Other TTS-providers like Acapela or LumenVox lease their TTS-Server software, i.e. you get a performance-constrained binary that can be deployed on a RedHat Linux server in your own server room or for instance on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). The obvious advantage over the completely out-sourced approach is quality of service (response time) as well as security and privacy.

[from Michelle Branch’s – Spark ..]
Getting started with something new, sometimes requires only little more than a spark, which I hope to provide by showing how to use your Mac as a Text-To-Speech server, converting text strings to MP3 voice sound files on the fly. When we are done, you can request an mp3 sound file by either sending an HTTP GET request like:

http://localhost:8080/tts/?text=Hello World

which would stream an MP3 back in return or send an HTTP POST request and receive a path to the mp3 file back, ready to be downloaded once or multiple times.

.. as easy as one, two, three

1. MP3 Encoding

Not only are mp3 files almost universally playable, they are also considerably smaller than wav or aiff files for instance and still provide a decent sound quality. While each and every Mac comes with Text-To-Speech capabilities built-in, the output comes aiff encoded and is only accessible as an command line tool.
Mac2Speech – a Speech Synthesis Server for OS X, on the other hand allows you to use your Mac as a Text-To-Speech server, converting text strings into MP3 voice sound files on the fly.

2. TTS Server

There are no pre-requisites. Mac2Speech is a HTTP server that by default is available on port 8080. HTTP server, MP3 encoder, and everything else is all encapsulated in a single compact binary. A web user-interface allows for rapid testing and experimentation with different languages and voices, accessible in your web browser via http://localhost:8080

Once launched, the server puts an icon into the dock, which when control-clicked, exposes a menu, to further configure the application. Here for instance the HTTP port can be changed:

3. Download and Go

Enough with theory, now it’s time to go and download the dmg file, put it into you Applications folder, and try it out.

The Web user-interface allows access to all installed languages and voices. Click the row, marked with a small arrow, to open a list of all currently installed Languages and Voices. Changing the language will also influence the available voices. More importantly, when changing the language, remember to enter the text to be synthesized in that language.

Unfortunately, neither of the pre-installed voices are great, but Apple provides free access to much higher quality voices, if you care enough to install them. ‘Allison’ for instance is great and less robotic, but there is still room for improvement.

To install some of the better voices from Apple, open ‘System Preferences’ then ‘Dictation & Speech’. Now click on the ‘Text to Speech’ and then on the selected ‘System Voice’ (e.g. Alex) and in the appearing drop-down, select Customize…
Here you can discover (play) and install some amazingly good voices. Please do yourself a favor and install Allison and Tom, two very good American-English voices.

Acapela Voices Download

But there is more, Acapela for instance offers natural-sounding text to speech that easily plug-in to the Mac2Speech TTSServer. The Infovox iVox product, developed by the Acapela Group, allows to download and install additional voices into the OS X Voices repository. You can install those HQ voices and try them for a few weeks and then buy them for $20 to $30 each.

HTTP GET Request

Sending an HTTP GET with voice and text parameters, will result in a MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM. I.e. the audio content is streamed directly in the HTTP response.

If the optional save=true parameter-value pair is sent with the request, an additional HTTP header gets include, to encourage downloading instead of directly playing the MP3.

Here is an example:

HTTP POST Request

Acapela Box Demo

Sending an HTTP POST with voice and text parameters, will create and temporarily store an MP3 file on the server.
The URL to that MP3 file is returned and can be requested, until the server gets restarted, at which time all temporarily created files are deleted.

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - January 28, 2014 - AssistiveWare® and Acapela Group announced today the release of Infovox iVox™ 4.0, which brings to Mac OS X a total of 31 new Text to Speech voices. These include the first ever genuine, natural-sounding bilingual American Spanish-English children's voices, a male bilingual American Spanish-English voice, 16 expressive voices to speak with more emotion, four new specialty voices, a new Polish voice and our first Japanese, Korean and Chinese voices. The unique children's Text to Speech voices are based on recordings by real children speaking in their natural language.

'The Infovox iVox voices can be used with any Mac application that uses Text to Speech, including Apple's VoiceOver, TextEdit, Preview, Safari, as well as third party applications such as Acrobat Reader or GhostReader,' said David Niemeijer, AssistiveWare founder and CEO. 'The new Text to Speech voices open up endless creative and educational opportunities and with the new children's voices kids now finally have access to natural sounding and age appropriate voices.'
Infovox iVox now provides a total of 107 system-wide clear and pleasant voices in 31 languages to Mac OS X for individuals who need audible feedback or reading support, for those who are interested in storytelling, for blind and vision impaired users, for language learning and for those who just like to listen to their computer.
New Infovox iVox 4.0 voices include:

• American Spanish-English bilingual voices: Emilio (boy), Valeria (girl), Rod/Rodrigo (man)
• American English voices: Will (happy, sad, shouting, whispering), Bad Guy (specialty), Old Man (specialty), Scott (teenager), Little Creature (specialty)
• French voices: Antoine (happy, sad, shouting, whispering), Margaux (happy & sad), Robot (speciality)
• Other languages: Jeroen (Flemish happy & sad), Peter (British English happy & sad), Dimitris (Greek happy & sad), Sakura (Japanese), Minji (Korean), Lulu (Chinese) and Monika (Polish).

With Infovox iVox 4.0 we have also simplified the purchase model. Voices can be purchased à la carte and cost only 15 euro per voice per computer. A 30-day full-function trial of each voice can be downloaded from within the Infovox Voice Manager, enabling a thorough evaluation before purchase. Infovox iVox 4.0 is a free update for existing customers.
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About AssistiveWare
AssistiveWare®, a leading innovator of assistive technology software for iOS and Mac OS X with over 125,000 customers worldwide, is committed to collaborating with the global community to make a difference in peoples lives. The company’s flagship product, Proloquo2Go®, is an award-winning Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) application for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch that provides a “voice” for people who have difficulty speaking or cannot speak at all. Founded in 2000, AssistiveWare was the first company to deliver universal access to Mac OS X with its award-winning KeyStrokes™ on-screen keyboard and the first to create genuine children’s Text to Speech voices. Focused on its vision to empower people through innovative technology, AssistiveWare offers a wide-range of assistive technology products and services.
About Acapela Group
Acapela Group invents speech solutions that bring content to life through giving it a voice in up to 30 languages. More than 60 resounding synthetic, yet natural sounding voices as well as new, authentic American and British children’s voices are ready to vocalize written content into a pleasant audio result. Acapela Group's repertoire includes producing a wide-ranging library of voices including voices that have: accents or specific dialect attributes, singing or storytelling ability, different moods and emphasis, voices for all ages and all languages and recognizable characters or celebrities. Each audio selection is authentic sounding, unique and original, presenting a distinct personality that perfectly matches different contexts. More than just simple vocalization of texts, Acapela Group aims to add a subtle layer of intelligence and significantly enrich audio dimension by offering more meaning and intent to each voice.