[DECtalk] Formant-based Neural Text to Speech Voices from Blastbay Studios

[Blake Roberts]

Hi everyone,

Jayson: Thank you for having informed this listserv about the 
availability of the new SAPI5 voices from BlastBay Studios. I purchased 
both voices this evening and am impressed with their naturalness and 
responsiveness.

Note to all: If you want to buy the voices, don't have a PayPal account 
and would like to avoid stress which can be caused by PayPal's checkout 
process, you can. Solution:  checkout with Stripe instead. Philip told 
me via email that he added Stripe as a checkout option earlier today. 
Consequence: I purchased the Richard and Libby voices using Stripe 
checkout option. The benefit of a business owner having choices 
available for two checkout options (i.e. PayPal and Stripe) is the 
customer can choose the payment processor which is most convenient for 
them. Philip granted written permission for me to share with this 
listserv the fact that Stripe is now available as a checkout option 
inhis online store.


Blake



On 6/21/2025 12:55 AM, Jayson Smith wrote:
> The following was posted to the https://audiogames.net forum on Friday 
> morning:
>
>
> Hello all,
>
> Blastbay Studios is proud to announce the release of our first US 
> English text to speech voices for Windows. These voices work with both 
> 32 and 64 bit versions of SAPI 5, and they are responsive enough to be 
> used comfortably with screen readers and games.
>
> When you download a voice, you can either install it as a trial, or 
> unlock the full version if you own a serial number for it.
>
> In trial mode, the voice will function normally for the first minute 
> of audio that it generates. After this, the audio quality will be 
> degraded and you will hear background noise. When you restart the 
> application with which you are using the voice, the clock will reset 
> and you will hear the normal output for an additional minute before it 
> reverts back to the degraded quality mode.
>
> Please note that the serial number that you receive when purchasing a 
> voice is not tied to your hardware. This means that you can use it to 
> activate the voice on as many of your own machines as you like, even 
> machines without an Internet connection.
>
> A common request from users has been support for a custom lexicon. The 
> voices do have support for this, but we will be publishing a separate 
> download with a user lexicon that will apply to all US English voices 
> in the next few days.
>
> Please visit www.blastbay.com to listen to audio samples and/or 
> download the voices.
>
> On a personal note, I would like to thank all of you who have given me 
> feedback and encouragement throughout the development of these voices. 
> It has meant a lot. I hope you enjoy testing the voices, and I look 
> forward to your feedback!
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Philip Bennefall
>
>
> I have purchased both voices, and am happy with them. As always, 
> there's room for improvement since this is an initial release, but it 
> seems he has a good thing going.
>
>
> Jayson
>
>
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