Hi, I'd like to know if there's a way to add custom computer voices to A360 text-to speech, besides what is already available. I'm looking for more natural voices and I've found a few I'd like to use. Thanks for your help, cheers

Hi, everyone! I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 83, we’ve included important fixes and new features! One enhanced feature we’ve included: Unlock new possibilities for text-to-speech audio. Use speech synthesis markup language (SSML) to adjust the speaking rate, modify pronunciation, emphasize words, add pauses, and more. To take advantage of this update, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer, and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here!

Adding more computer voices to Text-to-Speech

DanielBolia-eb2
Community Member
4 years ago
Hi All,

I posted a very long discussion about alternative text-to-speech solutions with link to a TTS app. You can read the discussion at https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/alternative-text-to-speech-tts-solutions-for-elearning.

Dan
- TimNeill
  Community Member
  3 years ago
  Hi Dan,
  
  Many thanks for your detailed description of TTS apps and for the three .mp3 examples.
  
  Please could you describe what is involved in playing external .mp3 files direct from a Storyline module, via one of the TSS apps you describe?
  
  Regards, Tim
RebeccaMogol653
Community Member
3 years ago
I'm interested in this as well. Importing TTS voices would be huge.

My boss is willing to pay $5/month to get a more natural sounding voiceover for our courses. He is also aware that I have to download/import the audio files and manually create the subtitles-- and it is still more important that the voice doesn't sound robotic.

I think this is going to be an ongoing problem as we all learn online post-pandemic.
StacyLeaghWilde
Community Member
3 years ago
I agree. We need more natural sounding voices. Natural sounding voices is determining factor for me. I may need to create projects outside of Storyline if this is not resolved.
- RebeccaMogol653
  Community Member
  3 years ago
  Stacey I actually discovered that using the voice generator feature with articulate, even if the voices were more natural, it’s not worth it. Because for pronunciations you have to change the way words are spelled, but that also changes the closed captioning. It is A huge hassle to adjust those back-and-forth. It’s easier just to use a third-party tool for the voiceover and the automated captions in articulate. I use speechelo, it’s a one time fee of $29, and the main voice Joey is very natural!
ZahraaSaadallah
Community Member
2 years ago
I tried other authoring tools and a few have decent voices, I'm not sure how, till now, Articulate doesn't support better voices. Right now the feature is useless in my opinion.
RebeccaMogol653
Community Member
2 years ago
Woohoo! Huge time saver! Will finish a course today that would have taken until Friday with my third-party voices! Thank you, Joey!

Now just make it so all slide notes can be converted to speech at once :) (Already a feature request)
- EricSantos
  Staff
  12 months ago
  Hello Rebecca!
  
  Thanks for your feedback and submitting a feature request to convert all slide notes to text-to-speech with captions for Storyline 360! It’s not currently on our feature roadmap, but I’ll be sure to update this discussion if our team decides to reroute.
GraemeEssen-da6
Community Member
2 years ago
While this is a good step forward I am not convinced I can use it yet.

There are no options to customise pace, intonation, inflection, or build up a custom dictionary for business or industry unique/specific words.

Using those customisations in Azure Neural Voices generates an even better "real life" audio at the moment.
- EricSantos
  Staff
  12 months ago
  Hi Graeme,
  
  Thank you for sharing that adding more editing tools for text-to-speech in Storyline 360 would be helpful for you! We have this logged as an additional feature request, so I'll go ahead and include your voice. Here's a peek into our process for managing feature requests.
KellyAuner
Staff
10 months ago
Hi, everyone!

I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 83, we’ve included important fixes and new features!

One enhanced feature we’ve included:

Unlock new possibilities for text-to-speech audio. Use speech synthesis markup language (SSML) to adjust the speaking rate, modify pronunciation, emphasize words, add pauses, and more.

To take advantage of this update, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer, and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here!
- GraemeEssen-da6
  Community Member
  10 months ago
  This sounds very promising. I have a question about security.
  
  The text we send to be processed - is this secure, are we guarenteed there will be no data leakage?
  
  I work with company sensitive information which must not be used by any LLM or land up being searchable by any LLM.
  
  Thus the security and privacy of the text I send for processing needs to be secure and never used any further.
  - JoseTansengco
    Staff
    10 months ago
    Hello Graeme,
    
    Happy to chime in!
    
    While we use a third-party service for our text-to-speech feature, we always make sure that the data sent to the service is always secured and protected.
    
    Here's how we handle the security and privacy of your data for Articulate 360:
    
    Articulate 360: The Security and Privacy of Your Data
    
    Let me know if you have any questions!