[arm-allstar] Using Android to create text to audio

[WD9EQD (Bill)]

There's been some discussion on creating audio file from text.

The Android operating system has a very nice Text to Speech (TTS) built in
and 
can be used without having an internet connection.  I'm using the X-11 Basic
application.  
It's easy to write a basic program that can speak whatever you wish.  

For example, a one line program to say your callsign:

SPEAK "WD9EQD",1,1,"us"  

This will say "WD9EQD" in a woman's voice, normal speed, and English locale.
The first parameter is the pitch (<1 male, >1 female), 
second parameter is the rate (<1 slow, >1 fast), and 
the third parameter is the locale as follows:

"de" for German pronunciation
"en" for English 
"us" for English 
"fr" for French
"es" for Spanish
"it" for Italian


A very simple program will read and say a text file:

OPEN "INPUT,#1,"/DIR/DIR/DIR/FILE.TXT"
WHILE NOT EOF(#1)
         LINEINPUT #1,T$
         SPEAK T#,1,1,"us"
WEND
END


So it's a simple, free, decent voice quality method.

BUT..

You knew there was a BUT and it's pretty big.

There is no-way that I know of to send the voice output to a file.
You would need to use a  cable from the headphone jack to a
Recording device (ie, another computer).  

The other downside is That it is in Real Time, 
so if you have to create a ten minute Voice file,
 it will take ten minutes for the program to say it.

I've searched for Android Apps that would record the speaker 
output but haven't found one.

But it is fun to play with. 

Bill
WD9EQD