Speech synthesis programs (free)?

[evilC]

It will no doubt come as a shock to those of you that know me to hear that I don't actually have one of these. That is, a program that allows you to type in a phrase and it repeats it back to you in a number of (robot-like) voices. I used to, but on an old, long-dead PC which went in the bin a decade ago.

So... does anyone know of a free (or very nearly so) speech synthesis program that would perform such a function? I only need it to be basic, although if it was somehow tuneable, so you could set its 'key' that would be great. If it had a variety of robot-like voices that would be cool too. As you can imagine, I intend (eventually) to put it to music-related purposes.

Cheers in advance.

[Pinback]

Speech synthesis programs (free)?

Well there's 'Narrator' which has come as part of Windows since Windows 2000. I'm not sure how you invoke it on XP though.

[Andy C]

Speech synthesis programs (free)?

You might find something in this list.

Until recently I was working in this area, but none of the text-to-speech software I came into contact with free.

[Soccer Scrimmage]

Speech synthesis programs (free)?

Macs also have this feature via TextEdit. There are a dozen or so different voices, too. I can explain more if you are interested.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Speech synthesis programs (free)?

Text to speech converter

[Mitch]

Speech synthesis programs (free)?

If you want software like that specifically for music, do a search for "Virsyn Cantor".

[evilC]

Speech synthesis programs (free)?

Cheers, y'all - that's great. I think I'm sorted now.

While I was rummaging around, I chanced across this, too:

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/sayit.htm

Nice and simple, but maybe not as versatile as I'm looking for. I thought I'd share it with you all, just the same.