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Text to Speech VST : VST Speek !

Techno is reactivated

VST Speek is a free vocal synthesis VST plugin for recreating the old skool robotic text to speech we all love. Choose a preset, type any text and let’s speak !

v1.3: – fix for crash in Cubase when selecting preset from drop down menu – add hack for Presonus Studio One : text is now editable – fix memory leaks – MAC OS X version . => see https://blog.wavosaur.com/text-to-speech-vst-now-for-mac-vst-speek-au-speek-audiounit/

v1.2: – now the hack for getting keyboard events in Ableton is less dirty 🙂 – fixed potential bug on close plugin

v1.1: – 64 bit version for Windows – Fixed bug with audio buffer – Added hack for Ableton Live 9 : plugin should get keyboard keys input now – Added support for VST Key (not tested ! we don’t have Cubase) VST Speek text to speech is 100% freeware, the plugin is based on the Software Automatic Mouth (SAM) vocal synthesis software created by Softvoice Inc for the Commodore 64. The original C64 software has been reverse engineered and ported to C by Sebastian Macke : http://simulationcorner.net/index.php?page=sam

I have adapted then to VST plugin :

you can trigger the speech with MIDI keyboard (velocity sensitive)
you can use MIDI pitchbend
you can change original pitch or mouth/throat parameters while it’s speaking

This is not a vocal synth like “Vocaloïd”, it’s intended to do crunchy robotic lofi techno voices! It’s not intended for good quality speech synthesis too, better speech synthesis softwares exist now.

Please comment and vote for the most wanted feature / development for this VST plugin !

– 64 bit version – MAC version – ability to assign different text to MIDI notes – ability to read longer text (and / or read from text file) – assign pitchbend or midi CC to voice parameters. – Android version ? – more parameters

Don’t hesitate to report any bug you found.

Text to speech vocal synthesis has been used in some famous (and less famous!) rave/techno songs from the 90’s. The robot voices were popular in the nineties. The funkyest speech synthesis sotfwares at this time were :

The Amiga 500 say program : it used narrator & translator library to produce nice computerized robot voices ! If you are not a happy Amiga 500 owner you can use an Amiga emulator : WinUAE

The Commodore 64 Software Automatic Mouth (SAM) : you can use the brand new VST Speek or the S.A.M simulation program (command line executable for Windows) from Sebastian Macke : SAM for window

The Atari ST Speech : that’s the one in U96 – Das Boot ! you can use the Steem Atari emulator + stspeech.tos Here’s a port for Windows, command line application : stspeech.exe

Apple MacinTalk

They were all developped by Softvoice inc.

We must not forget the Speak n Spell toy by Texas Instrument ! This was a great piece of talking machine, that is still circuit-bended to death nowadays.

Here’s some 90’s music tracks that used vocal synthesis (Amiga or Atari) :

U96 – Das Boot / Kennedy (megamix):

Snap – The Ex-Terminator :

Signal Aout 42 – I Want To Push :

Marcel Hol – Serious Beats Vol.4 Mega Dance Party Mix (1992) :

The Deadkirks – Mr. Kirk, your Son is Dead :

General Base – Apache & Base Of Love :

The Scientist – Spiral Symphony

Rave Crusaders – Energy Overload

Romanthony “The Wanderer” (Journey Man Thump)

Smart Systems – The Tingler

1 2 3 techno ! maximum velocity ! reactivate ! maximum overload energiiiiiiize all system reactivate move !

This entry was posted in VST plugins and tagged freeware, synth, tts on 20 February 2014 by Wavosaur .

118 thoughts on “ Text to Speech VST : VST Speek ! ”

Mulperi21 February 2014 at 7 h 30 min MAC VERSION NOW PLEASE 😀 I would pay for it.

Adminosaur21 February 2014 at 12 h 42 min Very nice the album name 🙂 =>http://www.mulperi.net/audio.htm

Yahiaamine 2 February 2017 at 3 h 57 min LOL. i feel lucky NOW (Since i always want to use Logic)

OnImpulse 24 February 2014 at 19 h 56 min 64bit would be great.

wavosaur23 February 2014 at 17 h 05 min hello, I had this problem in “minihost” : it was because there was the “use computer keyboard as midi keyboard” option activated : when unchecking this option i had the VST speek working again. Maybe this is the same kind of problem with live 9.

sabine 23 February 2014 at 22 h 27 min thx for the answer, sound possible i will check it 😉

Wavosaureactivated24 February 2014 at 18 h 14 min Yeah ! i was searching for it but can’t remember the name !

May 26 February 2014 at 10 h 27 min Thank you! Unfortunately it crashes the 32-bit bridge (Cubase 6) Another vote for 64-bit version please

Wavosaur Post author 4 March 2014 at 12 h 34 min Hi, Thank for the report Does it happens when loading a FXP or a FXB ? could you send us the FXP/FXB file that produces the crash ?

Wavosaur Post author 11 March 2014 at 14 h 40 min Is it systematic ? i have downloaded savihost 32 & 64 bit for testing but i can’t reproduce the crash.

anon 11 March 2014 at 23 h 30 min OMG pen_tablet.dll for WACOM tablet is doing wrong. Looks its not your fault. This is call stack captured using ollydbg, 0018F99C 75D6FD57 USER32.MessageBoxExW USER32.75D6FD52 0018F998 0018F9A0 00000000 hOwner = NULL 0018F9A4 68F10998 Text = “Runtime Error. Program: savihost.exe..R6025..- pure virtual function call..” 0018F9A8 68EF33E8 Title = “Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library” 0018F9AC 00012010 Style = MB_OK|MB_ICONHAND|MB_TASKMODAL|10000 0018F9B0 00000000 LanguageID = 0 (LANG_NEUTRAL) 0018F9B8 68EA4605 Includes USER32.75D6FD57 Pen_Tabl.68EA4603 0018F9B4

Wavosaur Post author 15 March 2014 at 14 h 10 min Hi ! We’re about to update to v1.3, for typing text in Cubase i’ll apply the same hack we used for Ableton. I have not find a host able to reproduce the crash on preset change : does it happen everytime ? does it happen when GUI is open ? does it happen when GUI is closed ? does it happen while playing and or when stopped ? parameters should be automatable : pitch speed mouth & throat can be automated (works in other hosts)

Actvi8 19 March 2014 at 9 h 37 min hello great to here an updates is on his way 🙂 The crash only happens when you click on the dropdown of presets in the vst plugin menu. when you load a preset it opens the windows eplorer dialog and then you can select a preset and the preset loads without a crash. So only the dropdown selection causes a crash of the entire DAW (cubase 5).

Wavosaur Post author 21 March 2014 at 23 h 24 min finally i installed the Cubase Element 7 trial : 30 days should be sufficient for finding the bug! i was able to trigger some ugly problems when using the dropdown selection. it seems it’s a thread issue, a fix should come on monday 🙂 !

Actvi8 3 April 2014 at 9 h 34 min thanks, I hope you can fix it.

Wavosaur Post author 11 July 2014 at 23 h 23 min What host are you using ? I made some fixes for host that steal the keyboard events (Ableton, Presonus Studio 1)… some others host have options to send the keyboard event to the plugin (Renoise if i remember correctly, and maybe Reaper)

Wolfgang Rane 12 July 2014 at 2 h 23 min cubase 5 my friend

Veto 25 March 2014 at 4 h 45 min AU version please? Logic can’t host VST…

Wavosaur Post author 14 May 2014 at 0 h 07 min Hi Frankie can you please send the crash report to contact@wavosaur.com ? We were able to debug the VST version in Cubase with the help of crash report also, what version of the plugin did you use ? (AU or VST, 32 or 64 bit) and what is your OS ? Snow Leopard or Lion or Mountain Lion or Mavericks thank you for your bug report !

Wavosaur Post author 1 May 2014 at 14 h 14 min Nice track ! i don’ think i’ll add other voices to this plugin. i have another project with more natural voice, but based on the microsoft tts engine, it was the first attempt to get this robotic text to speech (ms tts + bt crush) but it wasn’t satisfying maybe i’ll release this other project (but windows only!) if some people feel the need for more natural voice

tomlxndr20 August 2014 at 22 h 11 min Well, that’s what I get for not reading the whole post. Thanks!

ElephantMax20 August 2014 at 23 h 12 min lol

Wavosaur Post author 29 October 2014 at 0 h 37 min Hello, that’s a good suggestion 🙂 for the moment i’m lazy and prefer suggest to use multiple instances of the plugin !

Wavosaur Post author 3 November 2014 at 19 h 27 min bonjour, quel OS utilisez vous ? Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Mac OS X (quelle version?), Linux ? OS9 ? AmigaOS ? autre ? quel DAW / sequencer / host utilisez-vous ? Ableton ?, Cubase ?, Sonar ?, Mulab ? Traktion ? EenrgyXT ? Minihost ? Chainer ? Studio one ? Muzys ? FL Studio ? Orion ? Cantabile ? Nuendo ? autre ? le host utilisé est une application 32 bits ou 64 bits ? En général il suffit de copier la dll dans votre dossier VST plugins et le plugin apparait au prochain rescan du host (en général il le fait au demarrage de l’application)

djjmi70 4 November 2014 at 17 h 20 min ha super ! il y a quelqu un heu je suis sous windows 7 j utilse acid pro 7 et adobe audition 3.0 mon windows est en 32 bits en tout cas je suis fort interesse car au vu de la demo avec cette voix type u96 , elle est des tres bonne qualite! en vous remerciant de votre aide

Wavosaur Post author 27 November 2014 at 12 h 15 min Wavosaur is more an audio editor than a sequencer. but if you want, you can use VSTSpeek inside Wavosaur : first create an empty file (stereo, 44100), check the “processing” checkbox, be sure to be in “loop playing mode” and then hit “play”. Wavosaur has to be playing for processing plugins. you can also do that : create an empty file load VSTSpeek type your text, press the “sPEAK!” button then hit “apply” in Wavosaur

Wavosaur Post author 20 January 2015 at 2 h 46 min thank you aidan ! i didn’t know https://soundcloud.com/fluidvolt/st-001s-tale pure awesomeness !!

Wavosaur Post author 21 October 2015 at 15 h 43 min yeah! donations are welcome 😀 you can donate to the http://www.wavosaur.com project, as i’m part of the team

Wavosaur Post author 21 November 2016 at 1 h 45 min Yeah ! FUCK DAT FUCKING FUCK!! let’s all start a copony !!

The cat 21 November 2016 at 5 h 00 min well jezz i finaley got it working got the standelone one

Wavosaur Post author 27 April 2017 at 23 h 29 min You can use it in your productions, even commercial productions

club c64 27 August 2025 at 11 h 53 min hello you ave a new version vst c64 speech ? 64 bit ? thanks

anon 24 May 2018 at 18 h 14 min same issue here – also audacity

AliceD 22 July 2020 at 9 h 50 min realy nice vst, but i got 2 questions, how can i record it in Cubase, it doesn´t react to midi notes and is therte a way tolet him speek in german?