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Azure Neural Text-to-Speech updates: 51 new voices added to the portfolio

Microsoft

Dec 15, 2020

This post was co-authored with Qinying Liao, Sheng Zhao, Gang Wang, Yueying Liu

Neural Text to Speech (Neural TTS), a powerful speech synthesis capability of Cognitive Services on Azure, enables you to convert text to lifelike speech which is close to human-parity. Since its launch, we have seen it widely adopted in a variety of scenarios by many Azure customers, from voice assistants to audio content creation. More and more customers are asking for richer and more diverse choices of synthetic voices for different use cases.

Today, we are excited to announce that Azure Neural TTS has added 51 new voices for a total of 129 neural voices across 54 languages/locales. With this release, we provide at least one male and one female voice for customers to choose in each language/locale. In total, Azure TTS now enables developers to reach millions more people with more than 200 voices available in standard and neural TTS.

What's new

Neural TTS has now been extended to support 51 new voices, which will bring to you the capability to have both male and female voices in each language for your apps. You can hear samples of the voices below, or try them with your own text in our demo.

46 new voices are generally available

In total 46 new voices are released across the 49 locales that are generally available in the Azure data centers/regions that support neural TTS (see the full list of Azure regions here).

Locale	Language	Gender	Voice	Sample audio
ar-EG	Arabic (Egypt)	Male	ShakirNeural	البركان هو أكثر ما في الطبيعــة إثارة للرهبة
ar-SA	Arabic (Saudi Arabia)	Male	HamedNeural	الناس مَعادن، تصدأ بالملل، وتتمدد بالأمل، وتنكمش بالألم
bg-BG	Bulgarian (Bulgaria)	Male	BorislavNeural	Шофьорът задължително трябва да вземе експерт за второ мнение, за да провери дали всички системи на автомобила работят нормално.
ca-ES	Catalan (Spain)	Male	EnricNeural	Les activitats docents tenen lloc al campus del Poblenou.
ca-ES	Catalan (Spain)	Female	JoanaNeural	L'artista està considerat com el pintor de les multituds.
cs-CZ	Czech (Czech)	Male	AntoninNeural	Opravdový zasvěcenec ví, že nejmocnějším tajemstvím je to, které nemá žádný obsah.
da-DK	Danish (Denmark)	Male	JeppeNeural	61 procent af de kandidatstuderende er kvinder.
de-AT	German (Austria)	Male	JonasNeural	Das ist das letzte lange Pfingstwochenende für Schülerinnen und Schüler.
de-CH	German (Switzerland)	Male	JanNeural	Eine Person, die sich bei Brandausbruch im oberen Stock aufgehalten hat, hat sich noch rechtzeitig in Sicherheit bringen können.
el-GR	Greek (Greece)	Male	NestorasNeural	Συγκλονιστικές εξελίξεις και ανατροπές στα επόμενα επεισόδια .
en-CA	English (Canada)	Male	LiamNeural	He had held the position since 2010.
en-IE	English (Ireland)	Male	ConnorNeural	Life is short, think before you talk.
en-IN	English (India)	Male	PrabhatNeural	Sometimes you can see snow on the mountains.
fi-FI	Finnish (Finland)	Male	HarriNeural	Yhtiö kertoi loppuvuoden tuloksestaan ennakkotietoja.
fi-FI	Finnish (Finland)	Female	SelmaNeural	Hevoset ovat uljaita ja nopeita eläimiä.
fr-CH	French (Switzerland)	Male	FabriceNeural	La Suisse comptera 5,6 millions (12%) de personnes actives en 2050.
he-IL	Hebrew (Israel)	Male	AvriNeural	הוא אמר שהמספרים מדאיגים בשל עצמם, אבל בכל הישיבות שלנו המסקנה היא שזה סימפטום למשהו רחב יותר.
hi-IN	Hindi (India)	Male	MadhurNeural	सिद्धार्थ ने भी शहनाज के साथ इस इवेंट की फोटो शेयर की है।
hr-HR	Croatian (Croatia)	Male	SreckoNeural	Video je pregledan gotovo 70 tisuća puta, a neki od obožavatelja su mu u komentarima pisali kako ih je motivirao.
hu-HU	Hungarian (Hungary)	Male	TamasNeural	A lakóhelyem nagyon komfortos.
id-ID	Indonesian (Indonesia)	Female	GadisNeural	Inflasi ringan terjadi apabila kenaikan harga berada di bawah angka 10% setahun.
ms-MY	Malay (Malaysia)	Male	OsmanNeural	Setiap individu perlu memakai topeng muka ketika berada di luar.
nb-NO	Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)	Male	FinnNeural	Jansson forteller at den svenske øya tar imot rundt 8000 besøkende fra Norge årlig.
nb-NO	Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)	Female	PernilleNeural	For en fantastisk forestilling!
nl-NL	Dutch (Netherlands)	Female	FennaNeural	De afstand tussen Rotterdam en Breda is ongeveer 45 km.
nl-NL	Dutch (Netherlands)	Male	MaartenNeural	Zij heeft haar studie al een tijdje geleden afgerond.
pl-PL	Polish (Poland)	Female	AgnieszkaNeural	To już nie będzie to samo, będzie drożej.
pl-PL	Polish (Poland)	Male	MarekNeural	Na wszelki wypadek sprawdź, czy coś cię jednak nie zaskoczy.
pt-PT	Portuguese (Portugal)	Male	DuarteNeural	Para a aprovação do exame, tenho de ter pelo menos 80% das respostas corretas.
pt-PT	Portuguese (Portugal)	Female	RaquelNeural	A minha mãe ensinou-me que devo ter respeito por todos, mas principalmente pelos mais velhos.
ro-RO	Romanian (Romania)	Male	EmilNeural	Actul normativ se axează pe instituirea de măsuri active, 41,5 % din salariul de bază la revenirea din șomaj tehnic.
ru-RU	Russian (Russia)	Male	DmitryNeural	Ранее посольство требовало от агентства опровержения статьи о количестве больничных коек в России.
ru-RU	Russian (Russia)	Female	SvetlanaNeural	Изменений в организме людей, попробовавших еду без приправ, не произошло.
sk-SK	Slovak (Slovakia)	Male	LukasNeural	Zápis 45 % je v skutočnosti iba skratka pre zlomok.
sl-SI	Slovenian (Slovenia)	Male	RokNeural	Zloraba bonov in dvigovanje cen turističnih storitev je nesprejemljivo ravnanje.
sv-SE	Swedish (Sweden)	Male	MattiasNeural	Båda lagen bjöd på riktigt bra hockey och skapade flera riktigt bra målchanser.
sv-SE	Swedish (Sweden)	Female	SofieNeural	Det fanns ingen trafik runt torget.
ta-IN	Tamil (India)	Male	ValluvarNeural	எவ்வளவு அருமையான பாடல் அது!
te-IN	Telugu (India)	Male	MohanNeural	అబ్బ, ఎంత పెద్ద భవనమో!
th-TH	Thai (Thailand)	Male	NiwatNeural	ธุรกิจขายอาหารเป็นธุรกิจที่ได้รับความนิยมมากที่สุด
tr-TR	Turkish (Turkey)	Male	AhmetNeural	Sosyal mesafeye büyük ölçüde riayet eden çocuklar, başta mahalle parkları olmak üzere sahiller ve oyun parklarında enerji attı.
vi-VN	Vietnamese (Vietnam)	Male	NamMinhNeural	Nhiệt độ hiện tại ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh là 38 độ C.
zh-HK	Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional)	Female	HiuMaanNeural	抗疫舉措成為安全重啟經濟的重要一環。
zh-HK	Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional)	Male	WanLungNeural	隨着疫情緩和，愈來愈多人回到辦公室上班，但是很多人仍想留在家中工作（work from home）。
zh-TW	Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin)	Female	HsiaoChenNeural	賭博的勝率應該不到50%。
zh-TW	Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin)	Male	YunJheNeural	台北車站大廳能不能坐，連日引發正反意見。

5 new voices are in public preview

We have also added 5 male voices in the 5 low-resource languages that have been supported since November. These voices are available in public preview in three Azure regions: EastUS, SouthEastAsia and WestEurope.

Hear the samples below:

Locale	Language	Gender	Voice Name	Sample audio
et-EE	Estonian (Estonia)	Male	KertNeural	Ametlikku meetodit sellise pettuse avastamiseks ei olegi olemas.
ga-IE	Irish (Ireland)	Male	ColmNeural	Ritheadh próiseas comhairliúcháin faoin scéal sa bhfómhar.
lt-LT	Lithuanian (Lithuania)	Male	LeonasNeural	Aišku, anksčiau ar vėliau paaiškės tos priežastys.
lv-LV	Latvian (Latvia)	Male	NilsNeural	Aizvadīto gadu uzņēmums noslēdzis ar 6,3 miljonu eiro zaudējumiem.
mt-MT	Maltese (Malta)	Male	JosephNeural	Anki tfajjel tal-primarja jaf li l-popolazzjoni tikber fejn hemm il-prosperità.

With this release, we now support a total of 129 neural voices across 54 languages/locales. In addition, over 70 standard voices are available in 49 languages/locales. Visit Language support - Speech service - Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Docs for the full language and voice list.

Continuous voice quality improvement

In general, Neural TTS can convert text to lifelike speech, however there are nuances that can always be improved. For example, we have customers who have requested the ability to support a scenario where Katja, our de-DE neural voice, can pronounce English words in the context of a German sentence. This was valuable feedback, and we anticipate a similar need across languages.

For German, we observed that our users prefer the voice to handle an English word/phrase as close as the native English pronunciation. To enable a voice model to speak English as a second language, it is normally required that we collect the speech data of the same speaker speaking English besides his/her native language. This is a big challenge as we do not have sufficient multi-language speech data from our German voice talents. By leveraging cross-lingual capability of UNI-TTS, we are able to generate more English pronunciation data with the transferred voice from our German voice talent. Such data is used to improve the quality of the English word/phrase pronunciations for the German Katja voice, so Katja can pronounce English words in a more natural way.

The CMOS metric is used to measure the improvement of the English word pronunciation for Katja.

This improvement has now been released to the Azure Neural TTS service for Katja. Moving forward, we’ll extend this capability to support more languages.

Tell us your experience!

By offering more voices across more languages and locales, we anticipate developers across the world will be able to build applications that change experiences for millions. Whether you’re building a voice-enabled chatbot or IoT device, an IVR solution, adding read-aloud features to your app, converting e-books to audio books, or even adding Speech to a translation app, you can make all these experiences natural sounding and fun with Neural TTS.

Let us know how you are using or plan to use Neural TTS voices in this form. If you prefer, you can also contact us at mstts [at] microsoft.com. We look forward to hearing your experience and developing more compelling services together with you for the developers around the world.