I need to use male voice in SpeechSynthesizer in addition to default Anna voice. I installed some files from Microsoft, and GetInstalledVoices() method says now I have Microsoft Anna, Microsoft Mary, Microsoft Mike and Sample TTS Voice. After I'm trying to set voice. Speaker.SelectVoice('Microsoft Mike'); my program throws exception: Cannot set voice. Microsoft Sam is the default text-to-speech male voice in Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It is used by Narrator, the screen reader program built into the operating system. Microsoft Mike and Microsoft Mary are optional male and female voices respectively, available for download from the Microsoft website.

Speech recognition, and text-to-speech engines, have come a long way since Microsoft's infamous Vista speech recognition presentation.

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Microsoft ships text-to-speech engines with its Windows operating systems, and uses it in some of its tools such as Narrator. Other programs may use the voices as well, for instance to provide users with text-to-speech capabilities.

The default text-to-speech engines were improved by Microsoft with new releases of Windows. While that is the case, their output is still clearly identifiable as computer generated.

Speech capabilities are added for the operating system's language by default, but you may add support for other languages in newer versions of Windows to get speech support for these languages as well.

Additionally, you may install third-party languages, language packs, or applications, that add even more voices to the operating system.

Installing new text-to-speech languages in Windows 10

It is easy to install a new language in Windows 10:

1. Use the keyboard shortcut Windows-I to open the Settings application. Or select Start > Settings.
2. Select Time & Language > Region & Language from the window that opens.
3. Click on the 'add a language' button. Please note that text-to-speech capabilities are limited to the following languages: Chinese, English US, UK, India, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish (Mexico and Spain).
4. Wait for the selected language to install.
5. Go back a page, and open the Region & Language page again. You should see a notice that Windows is searching for language packs on Windows Update. If a language pack is found, it will be highlighted after a brief moment.
6. Click on the language, and select Options.
7. You may install the full language pack, or only one component such as speech.

Installing a Text-to Speech language in Windows 8.1

If you use Windows 8.1, the process of adding a new language to the operating system is different:

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Language, and on the page that opens 'add a language'.
3. Select the language that you want to add to the system, and click on the add button at the bottom afterwards.
4. Select download and install language pack under the language that you have added.

Index of available text-to-speech languages in Windows 10 and 8

Language (Region)	Windows 10 and Windows 8.1	Windows 8	Name	Gender
Chinese (Hong Kong)	Y	N	Tracy	Female
Chinese (Taiwan)	Y	Y	Hanhan	Female
Chinese (People's Republic of China)	Y	Y	Huihui	Female
English (United States)	Y	Y	Zira	Female
English (United States)	Y	Y	David	Male
English (Great Britain)	Y	Y	Hazel	Female
English (India)	Y	N	Heera	Female
French (France)	Y	Y	Hortense	Female
German (Germany)	Y	Y	Hedda	Female
Italian (Italy)	Y	N	Elsa	Female
Japanese (Japan)	Y	Y	Haruka	Female
Korean (Korea)	Y	Y	Heami	Female
Polish (Poland)	Y	N	Paulina	Female
Portuguese (Brazil)	Y	N	Maria	Female
Russian (Russia)	Y	N	Irina	Female
Spanish (Mexico)	Y	N	Sabina	Female
Spanish (Spain)	Y	Y	Helena	Female

Free and Open Source text-to-speech languages

I mentioned earlier that you can add third-party languages to Windows as well. The following list is a small selection of free and open source solutions:

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• ESpeak is a speech synthesizer for Windows and Linux. It includes different voices, and adds support for languages that Windows does not support text-to-speech for. The program is compatible with Windows 7 and newer versions of Windows.
  • Afrikaans, Albanian, Aragonese, Armenian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kannada, Kurdish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Macedonian, Malaysian, Malayalam, Mandarin, Nepalese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh.
• Zero2000 offers a selection of voices for all versions of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows 10.
  • different Microsoft English voices, L&H TTS3000 English voices, Microsoft Simplified Chinese voice (male), additional English voice packages by Microsoft, L&H TTS3000 language packages for British English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Russian

Commercial providers

There are also commercial providers. These offer for-personal use packages, and business packages that you may use commercially.

1. Cereproc -- Windows voices are offered for about $30 each for personal use. You can test the available voices on the site directly. Commercial packages are available as well.
2. Cepstral - Offers voices for personal use for Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as commercial use. The price starts at $10 and goes up to $45 for personal voices. Demos are available.

Now You: Do you use text-to-speech apps or services?

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New versions of Windows often add new text-to-speech voices. Windows Vista added Anna which was retained up to Windows 7. Windows 8 also had new voices, David, Zira and Hazel. Windows 10 features a set of additional voices in Technical Preview. In the current build 9879 of Windows 10, enthusiasts have discovered the following new voices in the US English version : Microsoft Mark Mobile and Microsoft Eva Mobile, and a special test voice designed for Cortana. The older Windows 8 voices are also present. It is possible to unlock the 'Eva' voice and check it out if you're interested. Here is how.

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The Eva voice can be unlocked with a special Registry tweak. It looks as follows:

Save the above text as a *.reg file. Alternatively, you can download ready-to-use Registry file below:
Download Registry tweak for Eva voice

Now, do the following:

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1. Open Control Panel
2. Go to the following path:
3. On the left, click the 'Text to speech' link. There you will find the new Eva Mobile voice. Click the Preview Voice button to listen to it:
   

That's it. (via kw259@MDL)

Are you a fan of text-to-speech voices? You will find many more localized voices if you install Language Packs for your version of Windows. For example, the Spanish version includes Helena and Sabina. The French version has Microsoft Hortense, German has Hedda, Japanese has Haruka and Huihui, Chinese Traditional version has Tracy and so on.

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