Good quality TTS voices for commercial use

9 years ago

Hi Ivan,

I looked at - or listened - to a few TTS implementations for a software package I was having developed, and most of them sounded pretty bad, or were ridiculously priced.

The best I was able to find was Ivona - IVONA Text-to-Speech

If I remember correctly, the cost was about $35-$50 depending on platform (PC, smart phone). The site has a 'try-out' that you can paste some text into to hear.

I also seem to remember they have a cloud app to voice-enable services and apps, and it was in free beta last I looked.

Michael

Thanks
1 reply

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mod

9 years ago

Hello Michael,

Thanks for your quick reply. IVONA do have good quality videos however the problem is with distributing them for commercial use (even for youtube) is expensive. The prices you mentioned were probably for personal use only; or did I miss something?

Thanks,

Ivan.

Thanks
1 reply

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BusinessAce

9 years ago

Originally Posted by mod

Hello Michael,

Thanks for your quick reply. IVONA do have good quality videos however the problem is with distributing them for commercial use (even for youtube) is expensive. The prices you mentioned were probably for personal use only; or did I miss something?

Thanks,

Ivan.

I believe you are correct Ivan - I went back to the site after I posted, and it looks like those prices are for "personal" use.

I did see that they still have a sign-up for their free "cloud service" beta. You might want to look into that.

Thanks

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mod

9 years ago

I really like the IVONA British voice "Brian". I found a sample video someone created on YouTube that sounds like they used the voice of Brian: http://youtu.be/lJRTk-GGt6I

Cheers,

Ivan.

Thanks

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ForumGuru

Banned 9 years ago

I have contacted many of the companies that provide high quality TTS voices with regards to commercial use and broadcast licensing.

NeoSpeech:

Limited rights / use for audio output: NeoSpeech grants the end user, a non-transferable, limited, non-exclusive, terminable license to use the Audio Output for personal and non-commercial use only. To obtain a commercial, non-profit, institutional license, please contact NeoSpeech

My inquiry directly to real people at NeoSpeech:

Personal users CAN put personal videos as a private link but NOT to be shown to general public. If this is the case then it is allowed.

If the video is reachable on Youtube, then it is public and commercial, and not permitted under the usage agreement.

Thank you,

Trevor P. Shephard
Sales Executive
NeoSpeech Text-to-Speech voices | Interactive TTS Demo | TTS SDK | Office Direct: 408-496-1250 | Fax:408-914-2710

So I asked how much for one voice to use publicly on YouTube

The software package you would require for this project starts at $950 per year.

$950 bucks a year to use a NeoSpeech voice on YT.

Ivona appears to be much the same as the standard voice license is for personal use only and does not include a commercial, distribution or a broadcast license.

Non-commercial materials for personal use

Just to distribute to your employess you need to pay $650 bucks a voice.

Standard license - for distribution of speech content to your employees only
e-learning and training materials, corporate presentations, multimedia materials

To distribute publicly on YouTube etc. the price is so high it's not even listed on their website...you must submit a form to get a price.

Extended license - for users who want to publish created speech files in various products or services publications, multimedia materials, IVR voice prompts, public announcement recordings

IVONA Studio | IVONA Text-to-speech

Cepstral only wants $1200 a year for a distribution license.

My question to Cepstral support:

So with the standard license (not a redistribution license) can I upload my videos using a Cepstral voice to youtube for personal use?

How about doing a review video or promo video with the voice...is this allowed under the normal license? Or is the redistribution license any cheaper?

Thanks for your time.

The reply from Cepstral:

09/06/2013 2:05 pm
Don,

You would need to purchase an Audio Distribution License yourself. The cost would be the same $1,200 per year.

Patrick Dexter

iSpeech wanted $200 for 4000 words on public videos (YouTube, Website, etc).

Hi Don,

Thanks for your email. Our personal accounts can only be used for dynamic
text to speech which will not be shared publicly.
If you need to store the audio in order to create a youtube video, that
would be considered commercial use. You can purchase "static" tts credits
which include a license to generate and distribute audio files (or make
public). Pricing is based on the # of words you need.

Once I have a better idea about the # words, I can provide pricing. To
give you an idea, pricing starts at 4k words for $200.

Best,
Vanessa

Cerepoc was about as cheap as I could find for standalone voices for an unlimited n.umber of words/characters.

Personal use license was out for YouTube.

Hi Don,

The personal license only permits use by a single user on a single machine, so adding voices to videos on YouTube wouldn't be covered by that.

Best regards,
Graham

If you wished to use the voices for commercial use, you would need a commercial license and an audio broadcast license to permit you to redistribute the audio with your animations. A commercial license would be £99 per voice per year and an audio broadcast license would be £395 per voice per year.

If you have any further questions, then just get back to me.

Best regards,
Graham

I have contacted several other standalone TTS voice providers as well...all were singing a similar tune. If you want to put the videos on YT for public display (or any other public site including your personal website) you are going to pay some serious cabbage.

If you don't need a ton of TTS "time", you can find a few commercial broadcast TTS providers that will allow you to purchase by the minute or in blocks of minutes. Something like $29.95 for 1500 seconds, $79.95 for 6000 seconds etc.

Another option would be to consider some of the recent TTS video software that has been released, while I have not seen any written documentation backing them up, a couple of the producers say they can be used commercially on public channels. I have also contacted Adobe and they told the TTS voices provided in one or two of the programs within the eLearning Suite can be used commercially.

Here is a link to iSpeech...they are getting $500 for 10,000 words.

https://www.ispeech.org/static

Cheers

-don

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ForumGuru

Banned 9 years ago

RE: Jimmy's TTS Video Studio (the link above is to an affiliate offer) we had a pretty good discussion on this here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/internet...er-anyone.html

The thread started with a discussion of his first software, TTS Video Maker, and ended with a discussion of TTS Video Studio. The TTS Video Studio stuff starts here.

Cheers

-don

Edit: Jim's post that that had the link to the affiliate offer has been deleted.

Thanks
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Action Man 9 years ago

My link to TTS Video Maker is not an affiliate offer

I will read the discussion though
- Thanks
- 1 reply
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- ForumGuru Banned 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Action Man
  
  My link to TTS Video Maker is not an affiliate offer
  
  That member offer you linked to is an affiliate of Jimmy's, and that's that's why I called your link "a link to an affiliate offer". I did not mean to infer it was your affiliate offer Below is a link to Jimmy's sales page which is not an affiliate link or an affiliate offer.
  
  TTS Video Studio: Create Amazing Text To Voice Videos in Minutes
  
  Usually we don't see a lot of links to WSOs, or affiliate offers listed in Classifieds, posted to this main discussion forum.
  
  Cheers
  
  -don
  
  Edit: The post that that had the link to the affiliate offer has been deleted.
  
  Thanks
  
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MikeTX

9 years ago

I had a good sucess using voice called "Peter" by acapela. It is that kind of voice that fits commercials.

Thanks

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ForumGuru

Banned 9 years ago

Yeah, Acapela has some some nice voices, but like most of the others they are cheap for personal use but the licensing is expensive for commercial, broadcast and redistribution (YouTube, Website) rights etc.

The least expensive way to get into stand alone Acapela voices for commercial use is the pay as you go model as long as you don't need to do a lot of TTS work.

https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/acabox-prices.php

Cheers

-don

Thanks

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Action Man

9 years ago

you need a good quality voice

i paid an arm and a leg, and then you need to tag the voice..its tough

http://youtu.be/i5GUDnOTHBE

it works lol

Thanks

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Linuxma

9 years ago

for me i use ivona but unfortunately is not a free service

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Jeff Burritt

Banned 9 years ago

Unless you're doing a lot of videos, why not just use a voice over person on fiverr. I've done this several times with good results.

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BennyCurry 9 years ago

Sorry to bump this thread, but I was just searching for information on this topic and found out some answers in here.

Originally Posted by Jeff Burritt

Unless you're doing a lot of videos, why not just use a voice over person on fiverr. I've done this several times with good results.

I totally agree. The voices on Ivona, which are supposed to be the best in the business, do not sound natural. Sure, there are times when they do, but for certain words it sounds really bad, so the samples that you're hearing are using the best possible text, so that it doesn't sound obvious that it's computer generated.

I have an Ivona licence and was going to use the voices to do some client work (the best are Brian, Amy, and Emma), but then I came here and found out how much they are charging for using them for commercial use. It's ridiculous, they do not sound natural, you're far better off going to Fiverr or getting a good audio program and doing the voice overs yourself.
- Thanks
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- Robert Michael 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by BennyCurry
  
  or getting a good audio program and doing the voice overs yourself.
  
  Audacity is free and easy to use.
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  BennyCurry 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Robert Michael
  
  Audacity is free and easy to use.
  
  Totally agree. And if you take the time and watch some tutorials on YouTube, you can do some amazing stuff.
  
  Thanks
  
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joseph7384

9 years ago

NeoSpeech is the only site that I have found where the speech sounds realistic as if from a human being, all the rest sound robotic.

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blueskyblue

7 years ago

NeoSpeech is a nightmare company to deal with a revolving door at their sales department and dismal tech support. You get quoted one price then a week later that sales person is gone and they quote you 10 times the amount you got quoted initially after you started coding. I had to file a complaint at the santa clara district attorney office for price gouging after I invested a lot of time and effort coding with their voice.

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Petr Janeček

7 years ago

Hello,

I was investigating what's new on the TTS field and commercial use of voices and found that Amazon Polly is now offering reasonable price for former Ivona voices.
Do you know if any other from the big players (Acapela, Nuance, ...) did some price redutcion as a reaction on Polly? If I have to decide whether to use Polly for a few bucks or probably higher quality Acapela voices (at least in some languages) but for hunders of dollars for one voice, the decicions is quite simple.
All I need is one time creation of many audio files (hours of spoken words) in many languages and then time to time creation of new ones.
All the audio will be available in language learning application (web and mobile) so the quality of TTS should be taken seriously.

Petr

Thanks

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Good quality TTS voices for commercial use

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