If you're not sure, a good place to start is Balabolka's Audio Output button, which appears on the SAPI5 and Microsoft Speech Platform tabs. Recent updates include improved German language support and Windows 8 readiness.īalabolka installs and sets up normally, though of course you'll need to have sound enabled as well as speakers or headphones to hear Balabolka's TTS output. Balabolka works with high-quality aftermarket TTS voices, too. The program uses VBScript syntax for spelling and error correction, so it's compatible with most spell-checkers. Balabolka is based on Microsoft's Speech API (SAPI) but with changes designed to improve the clarity and articulation of the artificial speech generated by speech platforms such as the nearly ubiquitous Microsoft Anna (by the way, she's included with Balabolka).
'Balabolka' means 'chatterer' in Russian, and that's where Ilya Morozov's freeware TTS tool takes its name. Text-to-speech (TTS) and voice synthesis technology have come a long way since the days of choppy monotones and 'computer speech.' Today's TTS tools can be customized in so many ways that they can be hard to distinguish from natural speech in some applications.
