SpeechService in Azure AI Text to Speech

This article will present Azure AI Text To Speech service. The code for this article is available to clone from Github repo here:

https://github.com/toreaurstadboss/SpeechSynthesis.git

The speech service uses AI trained speech to provide natural speech and ease of use. You can just provide text and get it read out aloud. An overview of supported languages in the Speech service is shown here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/language-support?tabs=stt

Azure AI Speech Synthesis DEMO

You can create a TTS - Text To Speech service using Azure AI service for this. This Speech service in this demo uses the library Nuget Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech.

This repo contains a simple demo using Azure AI Speech synthesis using Azure.CognitiveServices.SpeechSynthesis.
It provides a simple way of synthesizing text to speech using Azure AI services. Its usage is shown here:

The code provides a simple builder for creating a SpeechSynthesizer instance.

using Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech;

namespace ToreAurstadIT.AzureAIDemo.SpeechSynthesis;

public class Program
{
    private static async Task Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Your text to speech input");
        string? text = Console.ReadLine();

        using (var synthesizer = SpeechSynthesizerBuilder.Instance.WithSubscription().Build())
        {
            using (var result = await synthesizer.SpeakTextAsync(text))
            {
                string reasonResult = result.Reason switch
                {
                    ResultReason.SynthesizingAudioCompleted => $"The following text succeeded successfully: {text}",
                    _ => $"Result of speeech synthesis: {result.Reason}"
                };
                Console.WriteLine(reasonResult);
            }
        }

    }

}

The builder looks like this:

using Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech;

namespace ToreAurstadIT.AzureAIDemo.SpeechSynthesis;

public class SpeechSynthesizerBuilder
{

    private string? _subscriptionKey = null;
    private string? _subscriptionRegion = null;

    public static SpeechSynthesizerBuilder Instance => new SpeechSynthesizerBuilder();

    public SpeechSynthesizerBuilder WithSubscription(string? subscriptionKey = null, string? region = null)
    {
        _subscriptionKey = subscriptionKey ?? Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_AI_SERVICES_SPEECH_KEY", EnvironmentVariableTarget.User);
        _subscriptionRegion = region ?? Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_AI_SERVICES_SPEECH_REGION", EnvironmentVariableTarget.User);
        return this;
    }

    public SpeechSynthesizer Build()
    {
        var config = SpeechConfig.FromSubscription(_subscriptionKey, _subscriptionRegion);
        var speechSynthesizer = new SpeechSynthesizer(config);
        return speechSynthesizer;
    }
}

Note that I observed that the audio could get chopped off in the very end. It might be a temporary issue, but if you encounter it too, you can add an initial pause to avoid this:

   string? intialPause = "     ....     "; //this is added to avoid the text being cut in the start