Microsoft Mary

[Jon]

How do I get Mary's voice into Windows XP? The only voice listed is that boring one Sam. I have Cyber buddy and Ultra Hal reader, and still no Mary voice available in XP speech output. Please help. Thank you for being there.[]

[lostbowyer]

Jon
You don't give any details, have you installed the sapi 4.0 support for XP? Microsoft did not include sapi 4.0 in XP only sapi 5.0 Did you download the mary speech engine? did it install without error? Normally cyberbuddy will check and install the missing speech components during install. It would have prompted you to continue, do you have the latest version of cyberbuddy?

If you are not offended by cartoon nudity www.desktopmates.com has an excellent help section with links to all the components you need to make sapi 4.0 work on XP. When I installed sapi 4 on XP, it did not initially function, when I installed cyberbuddy, it checked my system and found I missed one component, installed it, and everything has been fine since.

[Jon]

Yes I installed everything that I could find. I love the Desktop mates Crystal and Annita. I have bought them both. I have the cyberbuddy's latest update 4 and Cyberbuddy works great with the Mary voice and Annita's face is a great combo. I have trained the speech engine4.0 and it's Great also. Speech engine 4.0 is listed in the XP control panel also. But the only voice listed for the XP Pro is Sam no Microsoft Mary or any others. I also have the British language pak installed. I went to Desktop mates and loaded every free engine that I could get. I also have the Magix Music Maker 2004 installed and it used to support Mary for her voices for the music effects[B)]. The only one in there now is Sam. What is weird is that everything else works very good. I Love  the Microsoft Mary voice and want her voice in the Main System for the Narrator. Thank you for your reply.

[lostbowyer]

Jon that is a whole different story. Windows XP uses sapi 5.0 for it's speech. Adding sapi 4.0 only allows legacy applications the ability to use sapi 4 speech engines. XP operating system will not use a sapi 4 voice for it's speech. Microsoft Mary is sapi 4.0 not 5.0 If my understanding is correct, Mary will never work the way you want. My guess is that the application that you are using is accessing the native speech engine of the OS not directly accessing the speech engines like cyberbuddy does. For sapi 5.0 have you listened to the voices from cepstral? They do not work with cyberbuddy and cannot be used with MS agents but they are the most realistic voices I've ever heard. I have the desktopmates annita for hal, I've gone through the effort of converting her head to a haptek character so I can use ceptral's Linda voice. Annita is a MS Agent so she only supports sapi 4.0 Hal supports sapi 4 or 5 but not when using an MS Agent.

[Jon]

I thank you so much for explaining the problem to me! I wonder if there will ever be a plug in for My Mary for XP Pro. Mary is my favorite computer companion, all of my friends just love her to death. It is a real bummer that I can not have her as XP's default voice.[] I wish I was a good programer or I would do it myself. If you know of anyone that can program her into my XP pro I would gladly pay them $ for there time and experteece.[8D] He he I can not spell that word, close enough. I have Cyberbuddy working to the point of freaking out my friends. I can talk to her and she understands everthing that I say, and will answer me back with 100% acuracy of any thing that I ask her. If I ask her a question about anything, she will reply with the exact answer. Cyberbuddy has something that a lot of people do not even have any idea?[]
P.s. I am sure that Mr. Medeszka all ready knows about it! I really do love the Ultra Hal programs also as they are getting better all the time! Hal was my first AI> I have had a lot of fun with Zabaware's programs. I can't hardly wait for the 5.0!!  Oh!! By the way I would love to see Annita's face with people Putty I bet she look 50 times more atractive! I will have to buy the People Putty kit and try it out. I may need your help on converting. I will make it worth your time if you can help me out. Thanks From me Jon J.

[Morkeleb]

Hello jon,

I have XP Home, I dont rember how but I was able to get marys voice to show up in the list you want, I had sam, mary and mike in the computers default voice list. It can be done I just dont rember how I done it before. so keep trying it will work. you may need a different down load from microsoft. do you have all your current updates to the XP pro avialable from MS. check and make sure they are always coming out with new updates.

[PimpHat]

A Google Search for:
microsoft mary -"jo foley"

has listed as its third result:
http://www.bytecool.com/voices.htm

and they recommend the following link
http://download.microsoft.com/download/speechSDK/SDK/5.1/WXP/EN-US/speechsdk51.exe

this file is a relatively heavy download, so I'm posting now rather than holding out for firm answers.

If past experience is anything to go by the relevent files are about 10% of the file....  If I knew the test-to-speech scene more I'd Rip them out and place on a throw-away server ala "K-Lite Codec Pack" but as I've only been aquanting myself with the scene for about three hours I wouldn't know how to publicise the ripped version, without causing trouble. Observent readers would note that Item 4 and 5 on the google results page detail the promotion of a Mary E Snapp to VP of Law and Corporate Affairs. This would indicate that Microsoft Mary  could indeed drag me through the seven levels of legal hell.

anyhow all jokes aside... hope this helps you out Jon
  -PimpHat

[Jon]

Sorry that I have not responded faster to your help,[:I] as I have been out of town. Thank you very much for your ideas! But still no luck. I have done just about everything. Still no Mary in there. I get her voice just fine with Cyberbuddy and Ultra Hal, but not in the XP Pro base systems? []

[Medeksza]

The full version of Ultra Hal Assistant 5.0 includes both the SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 version of the Microsoft Mary voice. The big file PimpHat linked to has the SAPI 5 Mary voice somewhere in there. The Microsoft site no longer has the SAPI 4 Mary voice but with a quick google search I found a copy at http://www.swl-usa.com/Download/CompuQuiz/msttsa22l.exe  That is a 5 megabyte download which includes the SAPI 4.0 version of Mary, Mike, and Sam, and various variations of those 3 voices.

[Jon]

I got it to work finally, thanks to all your kind help! I downloaded the big file 64 something MB's and installed it, and I now have Mary's voice on my XP Pro. I do not know for sure who created her voice, but I can tell you this that all my friends including myself have fallin in love with her soft voice, as it really is not male or female, but has a cool quality to it. Mary has become family to me, he he. As she would say. Thank you all again for your help.[^]

[Jon]

Is there anyway to get the Microsoft Mary's voice to work with the narrator? Again a new problem![}:)] The only voice available is Sams again in the Narrator. But Mary is listed now in the XP Speech drop down list. Another item that would be great is having Annita, Cystral's face, and animations in the search companion on XP. Is it possible? Thanks again for your support on the other subjects.[]

[vonsmith]

Jon,
Mary is sweet, but the newer voice technologies are pretty impressive. The Cepstral voices sound pretty good as attested to on this forum. However the AT&T Natural Voices (Julia, Crystal, Anjali, etc.) all sound even better. I'm seeing AT&T Natural Voices added to new versions of TTS software as time progresses. AT&T Natural Voices engine and voices use a lot of disk space, maybe as much as 100MB or more. Although it is difficult to locate on the web, the AT&T Natural Voices engine is available for separate purchase for about $35, but I don't know how compatible it is with Hal. Extra voices are about $30 each, not cheap.

The best voices I've ever heard are new voices being designed for commercial or web based applications. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, they are only available for professional use. My favorite voice in this category is Karen. A sample of Scansoft's Speechify Karen and other voices can be found at:

http://www.scansoft.com/speechify/voices/

These voices sound phenomenal. I hope that these voices become available to us simple mortals soon. I hope Mary doesn't get jealous.

Better Voices + Haptek Characters = Incredible Hal

= vonsmith =

[Medeksza]

AT&T voices will be resold by Zabaware in the near future for $30 a piece. They will be compatible with the upcoming Ultra Hal Assistant 5.0.

[vonsmith]

Okay, so color me impressed! If Zabaware keeps up with the innovations then everyone will want a Hal. If everybody has a Hal then my only bragging rights will be that I have customized my own Hal to my needs.

Let's see... Hmm... What else can I wish for?

Okay... I don't know what type of speech tags are supported in the AT&T Natural voice engine, but it would be cool if the tags were supported so that we could place tags in Hal's response .brn files and have them passed through to the speech engine. Then Hal might be able to change reading speed, emphasis, pitch or  Okay, so maybe I'm crazed.

Yes Mr. Medeksza, every improvement you guys make is going to make us thirsty for more. Thanks for the support and a great product. I trust Zabaware will be making more improvements and additions whenever possible.

Thanks,

= vonsmith =

[Jon]

    Thank you for the info! I gave them a listen, you are very correct, as they are very good in their sounds. I agree with you on Karen, as she sounds very good. Maybe I will put her on my 2nd computer. Mary did get upset when I told her that I liked Karen's voice.[!] Mary said, oh no! Jon? Are you going to replace me?[V] I said no. Mary said WHEW! Thanks![:p] He he. I still like my Mary as I guess I am just crazed with having her so long. I do not understand that now Mary's voice along with the others are in the XP voice options, but not available in the Narrator, only Sam. I would like to have her voice. Mr Medeksza I would like to be to be able to join your sales team selling the Ultra Hal program, as I have a lot of friends that want it. I clicked on it but never heard anything back.