Choose default text to speech voice in Thorium

[dolevu]

Is there anyway to set a default voice on Thorium? I don't mind changing the voice manually if it doesn't work well for the current epub file.

The problem is even if I set the Windows default voice to Zira or Eva, the "system default" option on Thorium still uses David's voice.

[danielweck]

Hello, thank you for reporting this "bug" ... unfortunately I am unable to reproduce it :)
I am on MacOS, I use the "System Preferences" Accessibility -> Speech panel to change the "System Voice", and Thorium correctly reflects this when choosing the first "Voice: system default" option in the pull-down selector list. Additionally, this default voice is marked with a star / asterisk next to its label in the list.
Note that the reader window must be closed and re-opened for the system change to appear in the graphical user interface (no need to restart Thorium entirely, just the reader window)
Could you please clarify? Thank you 👍

[dolevu]

It has been a few days and many restarts. It's still David as default on Thorium Windows.
What registry key or configuration Thorium is reading the get the default voice on Windows 10?

[danielweck]

Thorium relies on a standardised Open Web Platform API to fetch the available system voices:
speechSynthesisInstance.getVoices()
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynthesis/getVoices

Each voice object has a default property (boolean) which we use to display the star / asterisk next to the voice label:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynthesisVoice

When the Thorium user selects the first option in the GUI list labelled "Voice: system default", under the hood the TTS playback engine creates speech utterances with a non-defined / null voice, using the voice property of the SpeechSynthesisUtterance object:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynthesisUtterance

This results in the default system voice being used when invoking the speak() function:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynthesis/speak

[dolevu]

It seems it's Windows problem.
I tested with another version of Windows, and the default is still David.

[ways2read]

A little bit more information in case this helps. I am using Windows 11 with my localization set to UK. In the pull-down menu the default voice is indicated as David. My default voice in Windows settings is Susan. The voice actually used is George.

I wonder if the first or default is being used from UK English.

Thorium 1.7.3-alpha.1.1315905677

[7cio]

I have the same problem on Windows 10/11.
Here is what I did to have the default voice that I like

Go to C:\Windows\Speech_OneCore\Engines\TTS\en-US
Backup all David files
Then make a copy of the files belong to the voice I like, then rename the files to David

[danielweck]

A little bit more information in case this helps. I am using Windows 11 with my localization set to UK. In the pull-down menu the default voice is indicated as David. My default voice in Windows settings is Susan. The voice actually used is George.

I wonder if the first or default is being used from UK English.

Clearly, the "default" boolean property reported by the Chromium web speech interface is incorrect. I wish I could reproduce this bug in MacOS, but it looks like I will need to crank up a Windows virtual machine and investigate further.

[Moonbase59]

No voice (and no selction apart from "Voice: system default) on Linux Mint 20.3. Tried with 1.8.0 and 2.0.0-alpha.1.1846759180 (AppImage). I have "the usual suspects" installed: espeak, spd and PicoTTS. (Not festival, though.)

[danielweck]

Related issue #1648 (comment)

[danielweck]

Let's move this interesting thread to a GitHub discussion. As it stands now, and to the best of my understanding + test results, Thorium correctly relies on the information surfaced by Chromium. We do not directly interact with the operating system.