Text To Speech Conversion using Espeak Engine for Iphone Application Development

Introduction:

There are some 3rd party libraries and API which are used to convert TTS ( TEXT TO SPEECH ) in iphone

1) Sphinix                        ( Not Efficeint )

2) Open-Ear                    ( Do not Required Internet Connectivity offline  TTS )

3) Google TTS                 ( Requires Internet Connection )

4) Acapela                      (Not Free You Have to pay to get SDK)

5) Objectuve C Speech Synthesizer Speak Engine  (Do Not Required Internet Connectivity One of the Good offline TTS )



What Is Open-Ear ?

Open-Ear is a shared and open source iOS frame Work for iphone text to speech conversion (TTS Synthesis).This Technology is used to convert English Text Into Speech for iphone .

What is the best part in Open-Ear ?

This source is best because there’s no connectivity issue all processing takes place locally in the device mean you don’t need’s to connect to the internet.

Key Basic Concepts and Tips:

1 ) FliteController creates synthesized speech text to speech (TTS).

Now what is Flite Controller ?

Its an class which controls speech Sysnthesis that is text to speech in Open-Ears.

Recommended not to use Open-Ear?

Becuase app using Open-Ear library had not reached to Apple Store yet. Espeak Engine (Text to Speech Combing Its functionality with iOS Av Foundation Frame Work)

 Friends my focus is on Espeak Synthesized speech.

Now What is Espeak Engine ?

Espeak Engine is a Synthesized speech library which allows conversion of text into speech on iOS Device Just Like on Iphone.

Espeak Engine is static library of Objective-C  which is an OPEN SOURCE Synthesizer.

NOTE: Espeak has not been ported to iOS officially and Google has integrated some aspects like Google voice and translated for iPhone and iPad Apps.

Features (Espeak ):

NOTE: You have to study and understand the code to implement all this i will provide you just initial and basic code which will speak text.If you want to use and get application source code just comment and enter your email address i will mail you the whole project of TTS ( For Iphone Xcode Latest Compiler)

• Good Quality Sound and Many Voices are Available like male or female voice.
• This Is Written in C-Language so its very easy to understand.
• Espeak Support many Human Languages.
• You can Change speed of voices by changing inside code.
• You can also enable or disable voice pronunciation .
• Copy and Paste text anywhere in application.
• You can also open mulitiple windows.

Sample Code:
I am Pasting here sample small part of code to get introduced to it.

I will Explain the main basic code

First what you have to do is import libraries that is header file.

#import “EspeakEngine.h”

Now in main a  method is viewDidLoad.Here what you have to do is

• Create a New Instance of speak engine
• And Set All parameter u like to add like speed,volume,gender’s voice weather its male or female depends at you and etc other parameters.

-(Void viewDidLoad)

{[super viewDidLoad];

engine = [[ESpeakEngine alloc] init];

engine.volume=2;

engine setLanguage :@”en”;

}

Now What Happens when you write text in a text box and press speak button.Following Code is Executed now whats happening here.

•  Here SpeakEngine method is call and a string is passed which is written in text box

-(IBAction)speech

{

NSString *text = self.textView.text;

[engine speak:text];

}

Now this main function call functions from implementation .m file and and header .h file contains definition,variables of that fuction

Download Code Link 

Post Source: http://crunchmodo.com/text-to-speech/