All

• Bug fixes.
• Lexicon updates.

Linux

• Support for LibreOffice 7.6.0 AppImage
• Debian 12 and Fedora 38 clients use pw-cat from the pipewire-bin package to improve the latency of audio playback on low end systems.
• Speech toggling worked correctly with localhost speech servers on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS but not with Debian or Fedora. Now when using Debian 12 and Fedora 38 and related platforms, the click to toggle off function of the application works as expected with system packages and AppImage packages.
• Remove Festival voice support from the docker OpenTTS client, because the OpenTTS server does not work consistently with Festival across all supported platforms. OpenTTS Flite voices are a fast and reliable alternative.
• Change the client’s timeout terminal troubleshooting message when a speech server unexpectedly fails.

Mimic 3

The Mimic 3 localhost client now supports changing the speech rate.

Piper TTS

Piper TTS is a fast, private local neural text to speech engine. Users can create or refine voice models based on a recording of a voice.

This client uses the piper engine to read text aloud using Read Text Extension with your office program.

• Piper samples
• Instructions
• Download voices

Read Selection... Dialog setup:

External program:

/usr/bin/python3

Use the first available voice.

"(PIPER_READ_TEXT_PY)"  --rate 100% --language (SELECTION_LANGUAGE_CODE) "(TMP)"

Use a particular model (auto5) and speaker (45):

"(PIPER_READ_TEXT_PY)" --voice auto5#45 --rate 75% --language (SELECTION_LANGUAGE_CODE) "(TMP)"

Install piper-tts

If you are not online, then you cannot download voice models or configuration files. Once they are installed, piper handles speech locally.

Binary release

The binary release is fast.

The most recent binary piper executable program included in a piper archive for your computer's specific processor type. For example, piper_amd64.tar.gz works with x86_64 processors.

For example, for the piper_amd64 1.2.0 release, use the following:

python3 -c "import os;os.makedirs(os.expanduser('~/.local/share/piper-tts/'))"
wget -O ~/piper_amd64.tar.gz https://github.com/rhasspy/piper/releases/download/v1.2.0/piper_amd64.tar.gz
tar -xf ~/piper_amd64.tar.gz -C ~/.local/share/piper-tts/
ln -s -T ~/.local/share/piper-tts/piper/piper ~/.local/bin/piper-cli
~/.local/bin/piper-cli --version

Use the following if you do not plan to also install the python release:

ln -s -T ~/.local/share/piper-tts/piper/piper ~/.local/bin/piper

Python release

The python pipx package has higher latency, but the piper script simplifies automating downloading the required onnx data and json configuration files. Some Linux platforms use python versions that are incompatible or only partially compatible with the pipx stable release of piper-tts.

Install the following packages:

python3-pipx
espeak-ng-data

Then use pipx to install piper-tts

pipx update-all
pipx install piper-tts
pipx ensurepath
piper -h

Audition and download a voice model

You can check the voice models online.

Review the voice model samples.

The first time you use this client, it will set up a directory to store piper voice models (onnx) and configuration files (json).

~/.local/share/piper-tts/piper-voices

You can download the voice and configuration files for various languages and regions following the link on the piper-samples web page. Move the onnx and json files to the local piper-voices directory.

Read the README file in the directory for more information about using voice models for other languages and regions.

System-wide installation

If you want every account on a single computer to have access to piper then locate the contents of piper_amd64.tar.gz or the equivalent for your computer architecture in a directory that every account has read access to and link the piper application from the archive to a location that is in every user's PATH environment. For example,

sudo ln -s -T /opt/piper-tts/piper/piper /usr/local/bin/piper

If this piper client does not find user installed models and configuration files, it looks for global models and configuration files in:

/usr/local/share/piper-voices

Users can access the model in the directory from the client dialog using:

"(PIPER_READ_TEXT_PY)" --voice auto0#0 --rate 100% --language (SELECTION_LANGUAGE_CODE) "(TMP)"

If your Linux distribution includes packages to link speech-dispatcher with piper-tts, then you can configure the speech-dispatcher platform to use piper-tts:

"(SPD_READ_TEXT_PY)" --language "(SELECTION_LANGUAGE_CODE)" "(TMP)"

Piper TTS Links

• About Piper TTS
• Piper Samples
• Piper Voices
• Thorsten Müller - Piper Voice Training

All

• Bug fixes and code readability improvements.
• Lexicon updates.

Linux

• Updated localhost network speech platforms.
  • The Mimic3 python library includes a gender table for supported models. You can instruct the program to ignore gender by using auto as the voice in the place of male or female.
  • Enable the OpenTTS network speech synthesis on supported platforms. OpenTTS can use a variety of Linux speech synthesis libraries. You can install OpenTTS using docker on supported Linux platforms. OpenTTS unifies access to multiple open source text to speech systems and voices for many languages.
  • Handle out of range voice id more consistently across localhost speech engines using modulus math. (i. e.: handle
    --language "(SELECTION_LANGUAGE_COUNTRY_CODE)" --voice "FEMALE10" when there are only 6 female voices currently available.)

MacOS

• Fixed a python network speech synthesis regression, so python users can use network speech as a fallback for an unsupported language.

All

• Bug fixes
• Updated lexicons

MacOS

• Support for pipx (python pip using a virtual environment manager)
• Better support for user installed pip3 libraries

Linux

• Support for pipx (python pip using a virtual environment manager). The pipxlibrary allows you to install and run python applications in isolated environments. The pipx program replaces pip3 in Debian 12 and its derivatives.
• Support for developer-oriented speech servers – Mycroft Mimic3 and CoquiAI TTS.
• You can tell if the speech server is installed correctly if you can open a sample speech synthesis page in your web browser.
• Use either server using an option that includes the string "(NETWORK_READ_TEXT_PY)" --language "(SELECTION_LANGUAGE_COUNTRY_CODE)" "(TMP)" in the Read Text Extension main dialog.
• You can install spacy with pipx to reduce latency when using a local speech server with a long text selection. The spacy python library can intelligently split up long text selections into sentences.

Mycroft Mimic3

Mimic3 is a fast local neural text to speech engine for amd64, arm64 and armv7l processors. It’s available as an apt package for Debian or as a docker.io image.

• The documentation tells how to set up a Mimic3 server using the Debian deb package manager or a docker.io application.
• To test it out, use mimic3-server
• Once installed you can test the server and install voice models by using a web browser to open a local webpage.
• If you use the Read Text Extension dialog as described above, then the extension will try using mimic3-server first.
• If you prefer normally the system’s speech-dispatcher voice as your main speech manager and Mimic for a secondary language, then use "(SPD_READ_TEXT_PY)" --language "(SELECTION_LANGUAGE_COUNTRY_CODE)" --voice "AUTO" "(TMP)" in the main menu. The "AUTO" voice name enables using the local mimic3-serverfor languages that the system’s speech-dispatcher does not support directly.
• The instructions for Mimic3 describe how to set up speech-dispatcher to use mimic3 by default. In this case, you can omit the AUTO voice (i. e.: "(SPD_READ_TEXT_PY)" --language "(SELECTION_LANGUAGE_COUNTRY_CODE)" "(TMP)")

Read Mimic3 documentation and requirements for more details.

CoquiAI TTS

CoquiAI TTS engine is a deep learning toolkit for Text-to-Speech, mainly intended for use in research and production services. It includes a tool called tts-server that uses a local http service to allow web browsers and other programs that can connect to a local http server to convert text to speech. With the Read Text Extension network client you can check how new TTS models work with real world text. See tts-server --help

A server instance only serves one model at a time, but you can specify the language by selecting a model that includes the iso language code for the language in the model name. See tts-server --list_models

If you do not specify a model, then the server uses a female en-US model by default.

Example server commands

• Default tts-server
• English tts-server --model_name tts_models/en/vctk/vits
• French tts-server --model_name tts_models/fr/css10/vits

Check the documentation for specific hardware and software requirements. Some voice models require system files that are not explicitly stated in the documentation. Best practice is to use TTS python libraries in a virtual environment by installing TTS using venv, pipx or docker.io tools. You can use the web page interface to test if the server works and if there are any problems with a particular voice model. If a model does not work at all, run the tts-server program in a command window and note any error messages that mention missing libraries or system packages.

Read Text Extension's python TTS client uses a few additional system packages - python3-bs4, python3-pip, pipx and espeak-ng. On supported Ubuntu distributions you can use:

sudo apt-get install python3-bs4 python3-pip pipx espeak-ng

To troubleshoot the server and the client, you can see information and error messages when you run the server and office program using separate terminal windows.

• Server tts-server --model_name tts_models/en/vctk/vits
• Client /usr/bin/libreoffice

Enable Coqui.ai TTS server in the office program using the main Read Text Extension dialog with

"(NETWORK_READ_TEXT_PY)" --language "(SELECTION_LANGUAGE_COUNTRY_CODE)" "(TMP)"

If you prefer normally the system’s speech-dispatcher voice as your main speech manager and tts-server for an unsupported secondary language, then use

"(SPD_READ_TEXT_PY)" --language "(SELECTION_LANGUAGE_COUNTRY_CODE)" --voice "AUTO" "(TMP)"`

Read CoquiAI TTS Documents and CoquiAI GitHub pages for more details about the CoquiAI project and tts-server.