Same here. All the ones I tested have all become female. It seems only the EN-US has improved. All the others have degraded.
Are you running the latest version of the plugin? As Lolodomo added a ‘Microsoft Option’ field where you can specify Male or female for the voice gender to use. Has that option been removed by MS?
Running 1.4 and have never seen such an option.
To my knowledge… no. I’ve been running 1.4 for many months (a year?) now. I have the [tt]Microsoft option[/tt] field populated with “MinSize|Female” and the voice has consistently stayed female, even if the voice itself has been altered.
As per LoloDomo’s post on page 9 of this thread:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,33223.120.html
Find the updated files to activate this option here:
http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_sonos-wireless-music-systems/browser/trunk
I just received an email from MS. Seems the Translator is moving from data market to Azure. I’ve not been able to figure out if we’ll now have to pay for an Azure subscription or the free level stays available. It looks like the API is changing so I fear Lolodomo will have to rework the interface to keep it working.
Original email:
Microsoft Translator Text and Speech Translation APIs are now available in the Azure portal under the Cognitive Services category. Existing applications using Microsoft Translator need to be changed before April 30, 2017.
To change your applications, follow these steps:
- Subscribe to Microsoft Translator on the Azure portal.
- Modify your application?s code to use the new Azure authentication logic. The change is simple and required. For more information, please visit the Microsoft Translator is moving to Azure webpage.
- Cancel your existing subscription on Microsoft DataMarket.
The Azure portal brings a better user experience, including the introduction of a new Pay-As-You-Go offer; price discounts for higher monthly volume commitments, allowing for overages at any level; and a significantly improved billing and usage dashboard.
Additional benefits include:
? Subscriptions to the Microsoft Translator API will continue to be free of charge for up to two million characters per month for Text Translation and up to two hours per month for Speech Translation.
? New portal users can sign up for a free 30-day Azure account, which includes a $200 USD credit, or equivalent in your currency, to spend towards any Azure service.
? If you are a current Azure customer, you can include a subscription to the Microsoft Translator API as part of your overall Azure purchase.
Here?s additional information you should know:
? You can immediately subscribe to the Microsoft Translator API in the Azure portal.
? Beginning January 1, 2017, your access to your Microsoft Translator service in your current DataMarket subscription will be limited, and you will not be able to upgrade or downgrade your subscription plan.
? You may concurrently create a new Azure account and subscribe to the Translator API in the portal. If you haven?t already used a free 30-day Azure account subscription, you can use your free trial credits for testing and configuring the Microsoft Translator API during the migration.
? Remaining Microsoft Translator API subscriptions on DataMarket will be retired on April 30, 2017.
For more information about the availability of the Microsoft Translator API on the Azure portal, please visit our Microsoft Translator Blog. For questions, support, migration information, and additional updates, please visit the Microsoft Translator User Forum.
Thank you for your continued use of the Microsoft Translator service.
Thank you,
Your Azure Team
MS translator is moving page: https://translatorbusiness.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/1078534-microsoft-translator-on-azure?WT.mc_id=azurebg_email_Trans_1228_Microsoft_Translator_Azure_Portal
Luckily I have MaryTTS installed and configured locally so I have a backup TTS solution.
I got the same thing this evening… looks like we have some time to make the switch… i don’t think it will be to bad.
has anyone made the switch yet?
is it free or paid service?
we should start asking lolodomo to see if he can make time to for us novice users to get the fix in place…
It makes no sense to make the switch at this time as I doubt the plugin has been updated to work on the Azure cloud yet. So if you update the MS side and it deletes your old settings, the plugin will most likely break and Vera will be left speechless
I read that new Azure account subscription requires to provide a phone number and a credit card number !
No way for me !
I took a quick look to the new API and I have the feeling everything is different. So I would recommend to implement a new TTS engine in the plugin. I will not do it myself, I am sorry.
@lolodomo: I wholly understand your standpoint and support it. Thank your for all your excellent work on the plugin. I’ll switch to MaryTTS as I have that setup as a backup already.
Could this be an alternative? http://www.voicerss.org/tts/
Hmm, the voices are a bit robotic but not half bad. the API key seems to be free for developers so that is a plus.
It will be up to Lolodomo to decide wether or not it’s worth the effort.
If you have something running 24/7, you may want to look into MaryTTS (http://mary.dfki.de/) which is already supported. As it’s Java based it’ll run on most platforms. I set it up on my WHS2011 server that already runs Blue Iris
Judging from below email I just received we can pretty much be sure that on March 31st 2017, the MS TTS support will be be gone. Leaving the plugin with Google and MaryTTS support…
Thank you for using Azure DataMarket. On March 31, 2017, we?ll retire DataMarket and all its services.
We?re retiring DataMarket because we?re not seeing the sustained customer interest in DataMarket to enable us to continue with this marketplace.
What does this mean for you?
On March 31, 2017, we?ll cancel all orders placed through DataMarket. To determine what subscription(s) you may have, please sign in to DataMarket, click My Account, and then click My Data or My Applications.
? If you subscribed to a free service, access will end at the end of March 2017.
? If you purchased a Finished SaaS app, access will end at the end of March 2017, and you will be refunded for any unused days of your final bill.
? If you subscribed to a paid data service, access will end on the last day of your billing cycle that began in March 2017 (for example, if you were billed on March 25, 2017, your service access would end on April 25, 2017). After this date, our portal will be retired and the service will no longer be available.
If you want to continue with a comparable service, we recommend that you reach out to your specific data provider to explore suitable alternatives.
If you have questions, please contact us.
Thank you,
Your Azure Team
sadly this is one of the bad things about cloud services… they can go away at any time
.
Exactly the reason I try to keep as much local as possible. I have MaryTTS locally and up and running so switching for me is not a major issue. But for others this may be a big issue. Especially as the Google TTS seems to function less than optimal.
I wonder if MaryTTS runs on a Raspberry Pi. If so for less than about $50 you’d have your own TTS system locally
I wonder if MaryTTS runs on Synology?
I have / had MaryTTS running on an Ubuntu Vm and it works okay. sometimes the voices are slow and mostly robotic.
but it works. my path is vera → mary running on VM → rpi 2s and 3’s
i switched to the Microsoft one and have been much happier. hope we figure out another solution by then.
VoiceRSS is a very good alternative to Microsoft Translator. I am now using it through openHAB.
Adding the VoiceRSS engine to the plugin should be easy if done by someone with a minimum knowledge of the Sonos plugin.
On my side, I stopped using this plugin few days ago.
Anyone got a link to a simple writeup on installing Mary on a Raspberry Pi?