Windows 10: Stopping Audio Playback Mid-Stream with Microsoft Neural TTS Service and Speech SDK

MD SHAKIL KHAN · Oct 27, 2024

I'm working with the Microsoft Neural Text-to-Speech TTS service using the Speech SDK. I've successfully implemented audio playback, but I'm facing a challenge with controlling the playback mid-stream.My question is: How can I implement a feature to stop the audio playback at any given moment while using the Speech SDK with the Neural TTS service?Specifically, I'm looking for:The appropriate method or function to call for stopping audio playbackAny considerations or best practices for handling this interruptionExamples or code snippets demonstrating how to implement this feature in Javascri

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Brink · Oct 27, 2024

Microsoft Translator launching Neural Network based translations

Microsoft Translator is now powering all speech translation through state-of-the-art neural networks.
All speech translation apps that use this service, such as Skype Translator and the Microsoft Translator app for mobile devices, are now using neural network technology. Furthermore, the technology is available to all developers and end-users who want to use the Microsoft Translator speech API to integrate the technology into their favorite apps and services.

In addition to the nine languages supported by the Microsoft Translator speech API, namely Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, neural networks also power Japanese text translations. These ten languages together represent more than 80% of the translations performed daily by Microsoft Translator.

Neural network technology has been used for the last few years in many artificial intelligence scenarios, such as speech and image processing. Many of these capabilities are available through Microsoft Cognitive services. Neural networks are making in-roads into the machine translation industry, providing major advances in translation quality over the existing industry-standard Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) technology. Because of how the technology functions, neural networks better capture the context of full sentences before translating them, providing much higher quality and more human-sounding output.

Try and compare neural network translations at Microsoft Translator
Even though Microsoft’s use of neural networks for speech and text translation is still at an early stage, it is producing superior translations to what SMT provides. As with any new technology (we’re in the so-called ascent phase of the s-curve), we know the quality improvements neural networks provide today are only a first step towards future improvements. You can learn more about neural network-powered translation here.

By leveraging the scale and power of Microsoft’s AI supercomputer and the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, the team was able to release ten languages simultaneously; additional languages will be supported over time.
The ten languages are in production today, and available for users for translated Skype calls, for Windows desktop and the Skype Preview app for Windows 10, and in the conversation feature of the Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android.

Anyone can directly try and compare the improved quality of these new neural network models by testing translations at Microsoft Translator.

In addition, for developers and enterprise customers of the Microsoft Translator API, the deployment into production of these new models comes as Microsoft Translator becomes available for test and purchase on the Azure portal. To get started with the Microsoft Translator API using your Azure subscription, click here. If you are already a Microsoft Translator subscriber and want to learn how to move your subscription to Azure, click here. Neural network-powered translation is available for developers using both the speech and text APIs:

All speech API calls are neural network-powered beginning today.

Text API calls using the “generalnn” standard category are powered by neural networks for translations between the above 10 languages. Learn more about standard categories here.

Click to expand...

Source: Microsoft Translator launching Neural Network based translations for all its speech languages Translator

3d1l · Oct 27, 2024

Can't get voice for TTS listed in Control Panel - Speech Properties

Hello, I'm using Windows 10 22H2 19045.2251. I already went to Windows Setting and added all the languages that I want and change the voice for TTS that I want to use:

The problem is that I have a particular program that uses the Windows 10 system option in order to Read Aloud text within the application. But the voice that it uses is not the one display in the above image, instead the application uses the voice that configured from Control Panel - Speech Recognition - Text to Speech - Voice Selection:

Problem is that the voices listed there are limited and the voices that were added at Windows Setting are not listed. Also you can see in the image that the "Settings" button is dimmed so apart from selecting a voice from the limited list I can't do anything else in Control Panel. The voices that are listed in Control Panel are only: Microsoft David Desktop - English Microsoft Helena - Spanish Microsoft Sabrina - Spanish Microsoft Zira Desktop - English Do you know if it is possible to get the Languages-Voices that were added from Windows Settings listed in the Voice Selection option in Control Panel? The voices I will like to add at least are: Microsoft Pablo Microsoft Laura Microsoft Raul Thanks.

Aireyanna Havaska · Oct 27, 2024

Glitches about Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1 and Speech Platform SDK 11

I am using Windows 10 Pro N for Workstations 64 bit (v1909), and I have installed Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1, Microsoft Speech Platform SDK 11 (x64), I have encountered a problem while using text-to-speech software to synthesize speech from text, I think they
don't work properly, although I am not sure if there is a bug in the programs themselves or they are not compatible with Windows 10.

The thing is, while using Balabolka, I have found three tabs named "SAPI 4", "SAPI 5" and "Microsoft Speech Platform" respectively, although never used Balabolka before, I quickly recognize them as tts engines, and I assume SAPI stands for Speech API, below
each tab is a selection menu, I register as voices. I quickly found problems, SAPI 4 and Microsoft Speech Platform have no voices, the selection menus are blank, SAPI 5 has voices though, it has eight voices, but three of them are not working, while others
work fine.

When I type texts for the program to read, choose either Microsoft Mary [English (United States)] or Microsoft Mike [English (United States)], and click the play button, an error window pops up, showing message Cannot synthesize the speech: Class not registered,
then nothing. If I chose SampleTTSVoice [English (United States)] though, it produces repeative noises, at first unintelligible, after replaying a few times, I recognize it as a series of blahs with number depending on how many words I typed, does anyone else
have encountered the same problem as mine? Does anyone have a solution to this one? Please?

Windows 10: Stopping Audio Playback Mid-Stream with Microsoft Neural TTS Service and Speech SDK

Stopping Audio Playback Mid-Stream with Microsoft Neural TTS Service and Speech SDK

Stopping Audio Playback Mid-Stream with Microsoft Neural TTS Service and Speech SDK

Stopping Audio Playback Mid-Stream with Microsoft Neural TTS Service and Speech SDK

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