How to Change voice of TTS for Java

Question

I am using FreeTTS to speak out some text in my java program. I want to embed MBROLA Voices in it. I followed the instructions, but I got stuck here:

Enable FreeTTS Support for MBROLA

To enable FreeTTS support for MBROLA, merely copy mbrola/mbrola.jar to lib/mbrola.jar. Then, whenever you run any FreeTTS application, specify the "mbrola.base" directory as a system property:

java -Dmbrola.base=/home/jim/mbrola -jar bin/FreeTTSHelloWorld.jar mbrola_us1

In the tutorial what they are doing is, they type this line in cmd to make a jar file speak in the voice they are telling (us1) but what i have to do is that, i already have a java program and i want to change the voice it speaks. How to do this?

I tried to change the vm options but that does not help.

Note: I am using Netbeans IDE and i also have the file 'FreeTTSHelloWorld.jar'

So in short, i am looking for a clear explanation on how to proceed/add MBROLA Voices into FreeTTS library in java(for a newbie)...

What do you say? should i consider changing my OS to Ubuntu for Java Development???

Answer 1

-D is used to provide a system property to your java program. So you need to provide it while running your java program:

java -Dmbrola.base=/home/jim/mbrola -jar bin/FreeTTSHelloWorld.jar mbrola_us1 yourJavaClass

If you are using an IDE such as eclipse then you can do the same by going to:

Run -> Run configurations, select project, second tab: “Arguments”. Top box is for your program, bottom box is for VM arguments, e.g. -Dmbrola.base=/home/jim/mbrola -jar bin/FreeTTSHelloWorld.jar mbrola_us1

Answer 2

Into the terminal:-)This means you need to run your program from command line, here is nice tutorial how to do that.

But I think it can be also run from the NetBeans, go to the Properties of your project, go to Run and paste -Dmbrola.base=/home/jim/mbrola into VM options. You will of course need FreeTTSHelloWorld.jar on the classpath (you can add it through Properties -> Libraries -> Add JAR/Folder).

Answer 3

Have you tried something like:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.setProperty("mbrola.base", "your/mbrola/base/directory");
    VoiceManager voiceManager = VoiceManager.getInstance();
    String voice = "mbrola_us1";
    Voice helloVoice = voiceManager.getVoice(voice);
    if (helloVoice == null) {
        Voice[] availableVoices = voiceManager.getVoices();
        List<String> voiceList = new ArrayList<>();
        for (Voice v : availableVoices) voiceList.add(v.getName());
        System.out.println("Not a valid voice: " + voice + "\nValid voices: " + voiceList);
        return;
    }
    helloVoice.allocate();

    /* Synthesize speech. */
    helloVoice.speak("Thank you for giving me a voice. " + "I'm so glad to say hello to this world.");

    /* Clean up and leave. */
    helloVoice.deallocate();
}