py-espeak-ng
------------

Some simple wrappers around eSpeak NG intended to make using this excellent TTS
for waveform and IPA generation as convenient as possible. 

Target audience are developers who would like to use eSpeak NG as-is for speech
synthesis in their Python application on GNU/Linux operating systems.

Constructive comments, patches and pull-requests are very welcome.

Examples
~~~~~~~~

Direct TTS Audio Output
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

First, import the ESpeakNG engine wrapper:
[source,python]
----
from espeakng import ESpeakNG
----

now for some simple direct TTS output:

[source,python]
----
esng = ESpeakNG()
esng.say('Hello World!')
----

lower pitch and speed:
[source,python]
----
esng.pitch = 32
esng.speed = 150
esng.say('Hello World!')
----

try a different language:
[source,python]
----
esng.voice = 'german'
esng.say('Hallo Welt!')
----

specify phonemes instead of words:
[source,python]
----
esng.voice = 'english-us'
esng.say("[[h@l'oU w'3:ld]]")
----

Synthesize Wave File without Playing It
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

From Text:

[source,python]
----
import wave
import StringIO

esng.voice = 'english-us'
wavs = esng.synth_wav('Hello World!')
wav = wave.open(StringIO.StringIO(wavs))
print wav.getnchannels(), wav.getframerate(), wav.getnframes()
----
result:
----
1 22050 24210
----

List Available Voices
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[source,python]
----
l = esng.voices
----
result:
----
>>> l[0]
{'pty': '5', 'language': 'af', 'gender': 'M', 'age': '--', 'voice_name': 'afrikaans', 'file': 'gmw/af'}
>>> l[1]
{'pty': '5', 'language': 'am', 'gender': '-', 'age': '--', 'voice_name': 'amharic', 'file': 'sem/am'}
>>> l[2]
{'pty': '5', 'language': 'an', 'gender': 'M', 'age': '--', 'voice_name': 'aragonese', 'file': 'roa/an'}
...
----

Grapheme to Phoneme (G2P) Conversion
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[source,python]
----
ipa = esng.g2p ('Hello World!', ipa=2)

----
result:
----
>>> print ipa
həlˈo͡ʊ wˈɜːld
----


Links
~~~~~

* https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng [eSpeak NG]

Requirements
~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Python 2 or 3
* espeak-ng binary installed and in PATH

License
~~~~~~~

My own code is Apache-2.0 licensed unless otherwise noted in the script's copyright
headers.

Author
~~~~~~

Guenter Bartsch <guenter@zamia.org>

