I am happy to see that in the most recent beta version, 2.9.0.35, more speech languages were added. I couldn’t resist to check if the english section had been expanded, but it doesn’t seem that way. I would love to hear more accents, as that influences the experience of hearing my writing spoken out loud. I hate to admit that the theme of my writing doesn’t work quite as well with American English, and the only option available to me is the Hazel voice, which is listed under American English but seems to have more of a British lilt. I would like more such options.
Alternatively, some time ago I was searching for a way to add my own voice/speech files, am I right in concluding that this isn’t possible? Could that become possible in the future?
(apologies in advance: there are several more items on my wish list that I want to put out there, but want to give each theme its own thread ^^’ )
I don’t think Scrivener has it’s own speech engine. Rather, it seems to be giving you access to the one built into Windows. (And possibly others, if you load speech engines from other vendors onto your PC.) See the manual, page 545.
You can check this by launching Word and accessing Word’s speech feature. You’ll see it’s the same one provided by Scrivener.
ETA B35 only seems to allow access to Zira and David on my system, but I can see in Windows Speech settings that the Windows English speech package provides 4x other voices (George, Susan, Hazel, Mark). So I’d call that a bug.
Have you tried loading other Windows voice packages to your system? Assuming you’re on Windows 10, from your Start menu, select Settings, then search for Change Text-to-Speech. Select Add voices.
I haven’t installed speech packages this time around - my computer is only just back from repair and I haven’t gotten around to reinstalling those things yet. I have done it some time ago, and none of the packages I installed then, appeared in Scrivener. But that was several versions ago. I will give it a try once again and hope for the best
