Text to Speech in Java

Converting text-to-speech is very simple, just by using FreeTTS library.

Include library by maven dependency :

<dependency>

<groupId>org.mobicents.external.freetts</groupId>

<artifactId>freetts</artifactId>

<version>1.0</version>

</dependency>

OR

Download library (jar file) from here and include into project directly.

How to use FreeTTS API ?

Step - 1 : Get the instance of com.sun.speech.freetts.VoiceManager class.

               VoiceManager provides access to all voices available in FreeTTS

               VoiceManager voiceManager = VoiceManager.getInstance();

Step - 2 : Get com.sun.speech.freetts.Voice instance using voiceManager by supplying the voice name

               Voice voice = voiceManager.getVoice("kevin16");

               Here "kevin16" is one of the voice name available in FreeTTS library.

               You can also get all available voice names like below :

               

              Voice voices1[] = voiceManager.getVoices();  

              System.out.println("Available Voices");

              for (int i = 0; i < voices1.length; i++)

            System.out.println(voices1[i].getName());

Step - 3 : Set voice rate (i.e no of words per minute)

              voice.setRate(120);

Step - 4 : call speak( ) method by providing the text to speech

              voice.speak("<text to speech>");

              This speak( ) is overloaded to support various types of inputs like text, inputStream etc.

              You can also read a file by providing the fileInputStream as below : 

              FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream("d:/ttsInput.txt");

              voice.speak(fileInputStream);

Here is the complete code to convert a text file to speech : 

import com.sun.speech.freetts.Voice;

import com.sun.speech.freetts.VoiceManager;

import java.io.FileInputStream;

public class TextToSpeech {

    private static final String voiceName = "kevin16"; // this is one of the voice name available in default

    private static void doSpeak() {

        try {

            VoiceManager voiceManager = VoiceManager.getInstance();

            Voice voice = voiceManager.getVoice(voiceName);

            if (voice != null) {

                voice.allocate();

                // Set 120 words per minute

                voice.setRate(120);

                FileInputStream fileInputStream = new                                                                FileInputStream("d:/ttsInput.txt");

                voice.speak(fileInputStream);

                voice.deallocate();

            } else {

                System.out.println("No Voice Available");

            }

        } catch (Exception e) {

            e.printStackTrace();

        }

    }

    public static void main(String[] args){

        doSpeak();

    }

}

Here is a demonstration of a Speaking Alarm Clock application using this FreeTTS library.

Functionalities of application : 

1. class AlarmClock : This class creates the alarm clock UI using Java Swing API, having feature to set alarm for a specific time and triggers the TimeSpeaker to speak the time on the time for which alarm is set.

2. class TimeSpeaker : This class converts any time into word form

                            e.g  05:15 -> quarter past five

                                  03:30 -> half past three

                                  11:40 -> twenty minutes to twelve

3. class TextToSpeech : This is the class responsible of converting text to speech using freetts (Free Text To Speech) library

Download OR fork complete project from here .

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