From: James Teh <jamie_at_jantrid.net>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:17:48 +1000

Hi all,

I've had quite a drama trying to get SAPI 4 speech synthesisers to
work with voice building tools under Windows XP. The ActiveVoice.ActiveVoice
automation object just didn't exist on my system no matter what I did. I
even installed the 40 mb SAPI 4 SDK suite to no avail. I finally got it
working this morning, so I thought I'd document it here so others can
benefit.

First of all, here is where you can find the SAPI 4 downloads (SDK,
etc.). You will not need the SDK for this, but I'm including the URL
here for reference:
http://www.microsoft.com/speech/download/old/sdk40a.asp

Steps to get SAPI 4 to behave with the voice building tools under
Windows XP:
1. Download and install the SAPI 4 run-time binaries:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/speechSDK/Install/4.0a/WIN98/EN-US/spchapi.EXE
2. Run the following command from Start->Run:
regsvr32 c:\windows\speech\xvoice.dll
assuming Windows is installed in c:\windows.
3. Follow the VoiceBuilding wiki guide as usual.

Other useful information:
* If you want to be able to list SAPI 4 synths from your control panel,
download and install this add-in:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1366ee73-200f-49fb-b624-d5de6023aa23&DisplayLang=en
* You can change the speed using ActiveX with SAPI 4, but at least with
Eloquence, it doesn't quite behave unless you set the speed right before
you set the wav file name (around line 240):
                    oTTS.Speed = 425
                    oTTS.Speak VoiceReplaceStrings(sSpeak, sVoice)
    I also had to insert the following line in order to make the first
select call work properly with Eloquence (the new line is marked with a
comment; approximately line 200):
    oTTS.Speak "" ' This is the new line.
    oTTS.Initialized = 1
    oTTS.CallbacksEnabled = 1

Jamie

-- 
James Teh
Email: jamie_at_jantrid.net
WWW: http://www.jantrid.net/jamie/
MSN Messenger: jamie_at_jantrid.net
Jabber: jteh_at_jabber.org
Yahoo: jcs_teh

Received on 2006-04-18