Forum Discussion
Text to speech speed
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 of the new features 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.
Launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer to take advantage of this update, and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here.
Please let me know if you need additional help!
Hi everyone, in reviewing this thread, I saw a handful of posts that called out the robotic nature of the Text To Speech feature in Storyline 360 and I wanted to share some good news. Today in Storyline 360 update 80, users will be able to use better versions of most of the voices when inserting TTS audio. These will show up in the same place as the standard voices, under “Neural Voices”. These are voices that sound more natural and human-like and are considerably higher in quality compared to the older standard TTS voices.
A list of these voices can be found here. Updating Storyline 360 to the latest version is super easy, here is the guide in case anyone needs it.
We will continue to keep tabs on requests to support ways to control speaking rate, inserting silence, pronunciation and SSML support in general. Please let us know of any feedback (good or bad), around this enhancement and we’ll be happy to pass it along to our dedicated team of engineers.
All the best,
Michael Marcos
Customer Support Product Liaison
This seems great, thanks for the update, Michael. I experimented with one of the neural voices (Salli - English USA), and compared it to a course I had published several months ago using the same voice, and it still sounds identical. Do you know which English USA voices have been updated? Thanks.
Alan, he posted links to the voices, look for the list that is Neural and you see what is updated. A list of these voices can be found here. Updating Storyline 360 to the latest version is super easy, here is the guide in case anyone needs it.
Yeah, I looked at the list, and all the English USA voices are listed under neural voices, none are listed under standard. But the Salli voice sounds exactly the same as it has for years, even though it is listed under the new category.
Hi Alan, I've tested this a couple of times but they don't sound similar at all.
The update 79 version (Standard TTS) of Salli sounds like its coming off of a small pair of speakers and has a "tingy" attribute. In the sample below, the TTS version pronounces Neural like "Duval", the Update 80 version has more roundness in the tone, and the pronunciation and cadence is profoundly better. It pronounces neural like "nooral".
Update 79 Standard TTS
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/fdd037d8-ad89-46bd-b00e-7fbc67863985/review
Update 80 Neural TTS
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/b918467b-10a9-4ffd-8271-cb3b089d7377/review
Can you share a published review item with the Salli Voice on your end just like what I did here?
I just used the text description for neural voices as the script:
Starting with the September 2023 update, you can generate realistic, natural-sounding text-to-speech narration with neural voices. This is the full list of neural voices in Storyline 360, alphabetized and arranged by language. This list is updated whenever new voices are added
